#Belarusian Orthodoxy

[fioredistella]

I see a lot of people say Belarus was done badly and that hima doesn't know what he's talking to in regards to her. Personally I disagree. While there is stuff that could be changed or subject to criticism and that I might myself think is odd, overall I think hima actually did a good job with Belarus. Here I am going to go into canon Belarus, but I will also give some personal headcanons I personally have about her based on history and culture. 

In hetalia Belarus is characterized as headstrong, sometimes aggressive, loyal, interested in the supernatural and random trivia, liking her culture, quiet, crude, intimidating, harsh, cynical, and athletic. She is good at acrobatics, can see ghosts, is into rock music, singing, and fortune telling. She thinks her traditional clothing is cute,  cooks a lot with potatoes, but also has a very scarcity attitude towards food, thinking it's fine as long as there is something to eat. She has a cynical view of humanity, thinking they repeat their mistakes over and over but also seems to value human life, being aware of how short it is and therefore treasuring any human life due to that. She herself has indicated she also feels trapped and thinks of her own death as well, wondering how long she will live. For a time she was noted to have forgotten her own language, has implied she might know Polish but has also denied it saying she spoke Belarusian during the time her nobles knew Polish, sometimes prank calls Lithuania and Poland, and works hard on her agriculture. She seems to be aware that her media is filled with propaganda but also seems to feel resigned about it since in of her desktop buddy dialogues her task she does is to watch TV to be, as she says, "poisoned by propaganda." 

In terms of her relationships in canon with Lithuania she was noted to be childhood friends with him which I think is a reference to the Duchy of Lithuania after it had incorporated the Principality of Polotsk. He has feelings for her, but on her end it seems things are more ambiguous. She seems like she hates him. I think it is more complicated, but I do think she has a heavy grudge against him. My headcanon is that she resents him since after the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth happened, Ruthernian, the language that was most in use in the Duchy and was the language of Polotsk, fell out of favor and was replaced by Polish and many of the Lithuanians and Ruthernian nobles underwent Pololnization. I think she felt hurt, left behind, and betrayed by this and that she herself felt pressured to take up Polish customs and ways. She resisted this for a while, but saw Lithuania as more weak and pliant and was upset by this. In canon it's noted interestingly that she likes to prank call him and instead of being jealous of Russia's attention to him, actually wants him to be alligent to Russia and on his side since she tries to influence his dreams to have positive ones for Russia. This makes sense because anyone on Russia's side geopolitically will be on her side due to her political situation. She was also noted to spend time playing with his hair for some reason. 

While she spends less time with Poland she also expressed some negative feelings towards him and denied she spoke Polish. However she at least also enjoys prank calling him. I think she sees him as annoying and a troublemaker, a hypocrite, and as someone who hurt her relationship with Lithuania. She resents him and how he took over some of her land and people for a time and how some were made or motivated to abandon Ruthernian customs and language and take up Polish. She herself I headcanon knows Polish but denied it and was Catholic for a time before returning to Orthodoxy later. She thinks he is a self righteous person but at least does not see him as weak and does have some fond memories of him in the past. Her life was spent being fought over by Poland and Russia, and her powerlessness in the matter is something she has always felt and something she thinks he is responsible for. 

Her relationship with Russia is an interesting one. A lot of people focus on her stalking but I think that is a mistake since it's just done for absurd humor in earlier strips and there really is more to her relationship with him. It's noted she enjoys taking walks with him, singing with him, and talking about nature and love with him. However after the fall of the Soviet Union she noted "nothing good came from being with him" and tried to distance herself for a time before giving up on this. I think this is a reference to when Belarus declared independence. Right after there was a period of time of more liberlization. Stanislav Stanislavovich Shushkevich was leader. He had the old nuclear arsenal withdrawn from Belarus. However other reforms were stalled and he was forced out of power in 1993. Lukashenko was elected president in 1994 and he, politically, adopted a pro Russian stance along with the prime minister. From this time period I see Belarus returning from America and aligning herself with Russia more, returning to an attitude of resignation and apathy towards politics, because in the end nothing changed and no matter what she did, nothing could be done. In the end, it was safer to just comply. She does see her love for Russia in a romantic light, as their siblinghood is not blood related and therefore doesn't matter, but it is not totally without self interest. She is very cunning and manipulative I think. I also do not see her as always loving Russia romantically. I think it happened much later on and is a sign that she is not ok and that she sort of lost herself for a time, as well as being a survival method. A few interesting details I have noticed is that she is very demure and passive with Russia at times. When he asks her if she should get a new chair she tells him to do what he wants rather than give a direct response and in her last appearance when Russia is alone and snowed in she declines coming to see him even though Latvia and Moldova do, even though both don't really care for Russia at all. 

In terms of her herself one may wonder why I see her as so pliant (although she is also very strong willed). Belarus has been through a lot, her history has affected her vastly. In terms of other aspects of her culture I really like how hima made a reference to draniki, (a potato pancake eaten in belarus), her traditional clothing (which I would love to see him draw her in one day), and the fact that there is a strong history of gymnastics in Belarus with their teams and athletes doing well in the Olympics including Olga Korbut one of the most notable Belarusian gymnasts. Her cynical and sad attitude is very notable as well and stands out among the hetalia characters and it's interesting how she is aware that the propaganda she is exposed to is harmful. I think that shows that deep down she is very unhappy with her situation, but sees no way out for herself. She just does what she can to survive and protect her people, even if it is bad, or even if people might hate her for it, or it hurts herself. I see a lot of people say she must hate Russia too, but I think there is a middle path. I think she loves him genuinely, but she also fears and is made uncomfortable by him. She doesn't hate him, but she is wary of him and part of the reason she supports him is pure self interest. No one is truly on her side so she has to do whatever she can to live.

[doinghistoryinpublic]

posted on 27 February, 2024 on Doing History in Public, archived on 23 March 2024 on TheWayBackMachine | publication edited by co-Editors-in-Chief Tiéphaine Thomason, Murray Edwards College, University of Cambridge (@Teaphaine) and Beatrice Leeming, Sidney Sussex College, University of Cambridge (@LeemingBeatrice)

Adding nuance to Tucker Carlson’s interview with Vladimir Putin

written by Noam Bizan, Clare College, University of Cambridge (@NoamBzn)

On 6th February, former Fox News personality Tucker Carlson interviewed Russian president Vladimir Putin in an intricately decorated room in the Kremlin.[1] Much has been written analysing this interview and Carlson’s trip to Moscow, largely focusing on the interview’s implications for current US-Russian relations and the war in Ukraine, which just marked its second anniversary.

As a PhD student of Soviet history, I was especially interested in Putin’s history lesson to Carlson. He assured Carlson that it would take ‘only thirty seconds or one minute’; in fact, it took him over forty-five minutes to give Carlson his version of Russian history from its founding in 862 to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Putin’s obsession with history is unquestionable, but his narrative of history is less certain. The truth is much more nuanced than Putin presents it.

Establishment of the Russian State

According to Putin, in 862 the northern Slavs invited the Scandinavian Prince Rurik to rule over them in their capital city of Novgorod. Rurik ‘gathered the Russian lands’ and the Russian state, or Rus’, was born. In 882, Rurik’s successor, Prince Oleg, arrived in Kiev, and established a second center of power there. In 988, Prince Vladimir, Rurik’s great-grandson, adopted Orthodoxy and baptised Rus’, after which Rus’ grew stronger thanks to its common religion, language, and trade. Due to competition between the various principalities of Rus’,  the state became fragmented and was an easy target for the Mongol Horde’s invasion in the thirteenth century. The southern parts of Rus’, including Kiev, ‘simply lost independence’, while northern cities preserved some of their sovereignty and the center of power moved to Moscow.

Although this history is complicated and over 1,000 years old, it remains important to Putin’s simplified narrative because it gives him the opportunity to dismiss the relevance of Kiev from the start. Firstly, the origins of Rus’ are based on a founding myth, the Primary Chronicle, whose truth, like that of all myths, cannot be determined and is likely greatly oversimplified. Secondly, while Putin highlights the duality of Novgorod and Kiev, historians of Rus’ explain that Prince Oleg instead moved the center of power from Novgorod to Kiev, after which Rus’ became known as Kievan Rus’, a name which Putin never uses.[2] Putin presents the people of Rus’ as one group, a narrative which historian Andrew Wilson categorises as one of the ‘theories of unity’, which do not distinguish between the various tribes within Rus’.[3] However, other historians argue for ‘theories of difference’, which present Rus’ as merely ‘a loose collection of warring principalities’ with six distinct peoples: the Ukrainians (or Southern Rus’), the Northerners, the Great Russians, the Belarusians (or White Rus’), and the people of the city-states Pskov and Novgorod. Theories of difference are, unsurprisingly, especially promoted by Ukrainian and Belarusian historians, beginning even in the nineteenth century.[4]

The Artificial Creation of Ukraine

The fact that there were Ukrainian historians arguing that Ukrainian roots could be traced back equally as far as Russian ones negates Putin’s central claim that Ukraine is an artificial state. Putin’s narrative is as such: While the northern part of Rus’ consolidated around Moscow, its southern cities, including Kiev, began gravitating towards another European power, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. When the Grand Duchy and the Kingdom of Poland formed the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the sixteenth century, the Rus’ lands in question came under Polish control. The Poles undermined the people’s sense of Russianness by claiming that they were “Ukrainians”, since they lived on the fringes of the Commonwealth. Putin emphasized that “Ukrainian” ‘did not mean any particular ethnic group’: the term “Ukrainian” originally denoted a person who lived on the outskirts of a state or served in border patrol. The Poles treated the Russian people harshly, and they soon began to struggle for their rights. The leader of the Russian lands, Bogdan Khmelnytsky, asked the Tsar for help, and in 1654, a Russo-Polish war broke out in the Tsar’s attempts to help the Commonwealth’s Russians. The treaty ending the war gave Russia the left bank of the Dnieper River, including Kiev. Catherine the Great, the Russian Tsar from 1762-1796, reclaimed all the remaining historic lands of Rus’.

Putin’s so-called Russian hero, Bogdan Khmelnytsky, is also known as the Ukrainian Cossack, Boghan Khmelnytsky. The Ukrainian Cossacks, traditionally a free people, resented being part of the Commonwealth, so in 1648 Khmelnytsky led a Cossack uprising against it. This uprising was so successful that in 1649, the Commonwealth recognized a new Cossack state in the southeast, the Zaporozhian Host. In 1654, Khmelnytsky offered the Tsar his Cossack army’s services in exchange for Russia waging war on the Commonwealth,[5] which Russia also desired in order to reunite the historically Orthodox lands of Rus’.[6] Putin makes no reference to the Cossacks, traditional symbols of Ukrainian nationalism, in the interview. The Russian Empire justified the war with Poland on the grounds of saving Russian minorities in other states and, importantly, Putin uses the same trope to justify the current war in Ukraine. 

The Soviet Union

Putin also blamed the Bolsheviks for the artificial nature of Ukraine, claiming that they ‘established Soviet Ukraine, which had never existed before’. He was critical of Lenin’s nationality policy and seemed irritated that ‘for unknown reasons…, the Bolsheviks were engaging in “Ukrainianisation”’ as part of their general ‘indigenisation’ policies. 

However, the reasons are far from unknown; historians have conducted countless studies on Soviet nationality policy, and it is indeed one of the focuses of my own research. For the class-based, rather than nation-based, Soviet system to succeed, the early Bolsheviks needed the non-Russian peoples’ support in order to prevent nationalist uprisings against them. Moreover, to modernise the Soviet Union, the Bolsheviks implemented ‘affirmative action’[7] to promote progress among the ostensibly “backwards” non-Russians, creating national territories, native-language education and culture, and ethnic-based hiring practices. Finally, Lenin wished to contrast the progressiveness of the Soviet multiethnic union with the chauvinism of the Russian Empire.[8] Therefore, not only was Putin’s supposed confusion about Lenin’s nationality policy unfounded, but the very fact that the Bolsheviks felt it necessary to appease nationalist groups by creating national republics shows that those national identities – including Ukrainian – already existed.

The narrative Putin spun in his history lesson to Carlson is not new to anyone who is familiar with his 2021 article On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians[9] or his speech on the eve of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.[10]Given Carlson’s popularity in the US, though, this interview likely reached a wider audience. In the second hour of the interview, Putin focused on his narrative of post-Soviet politics between Russia, Ukraine, and the West, in particular the United States, but for lack of room I am leaving that fact-checking to the political pundits.

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Cover Image: Tucker Carlson (Creative Commons via Wikimedia Commons), Vladimir Putin (Creative Commons via Wikimedia Commons, originally Kremlin.ru)

[1] Vladimir Putin, interview by Tucker Carlson, February 6, 2024, https://youtu.be/fOCWBhuDdDo?si=Kig8kilFkHOHiKbN. ;

[2] Jonathan Shepard, “The Origins of Rus’ (c. 900–1015),” in The Cambridge History of Russia, ed. Maureen Perrie (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 56.

[3] Andrew Wilson, The Ukrainians: Unexpected Nation (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2022), 4-7.

[4] Wilson, The Ukrainians: Unexpected Nation, 8.

[5] Timothy Snyder, The Reconstruction of Nations: Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, Belarus, 1569-1999  (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003), 113-114.

[6] Amelia M. Glaser, “Introduction: Bohdan Khmelnytsky as Protagonist: Between Hero and Villain,” in Stories of Khmelnytsky: Competing Literary Legacies of the 1648 Ukrainian Cossack Uprising, ed. Amelia M. Glaser (Redwood City, CA: Stanford University Press, 2015), 9.

[7] Terry Martin, The Affirmative Action Empire: Nations and Nationalism in the Soviet Union, 1923-1939 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2017).

[8] Brigid O’Keeffe, The Multiethnic Soviet Union and Its Demise (London, UK: Bloomsbury Academic, 2022), 8-10.

[9] “Article by Vladimir Putin ‘On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians,’” President of Russia, July 12, 2021, http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/66181.

[10] “Address by the President of the Russian Federation,” President of Russia, February 24, 2022, http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/67843.

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Comments:

comment by Livvi, 23rd March 2024, 2.27 AM GMT [comment is unpublished and awaiting moderation]:

I am concerned to see a publication affiliated with such a prominent academic institution as the University of Cambridge promoting an article which is so entrenched in Putin's own formulation of Russian-Ukrainian relations that it does not even question Putids use of 'Kiev' (in place of 'Kyiv'), and in fact uncritically absorbs Putin's language throughout (among many, many examples, the article comments that 'Although this history is complicated and over 1.,000 years old, it remains important to Putin's simplified narrative because it gives him the opportunity to dismiss the relevance of Kiev from the start [emphasis added]'). I do apologise if I have failed to notice some sort of attempt at satire, but as is, I cannot see, or even begin to imagine, what either the author, Noam Bizan, or else the two editors-in-chief who had to have approved the article, Tiéphaine Thomason and Beatrice Leeming, could have been aiming for.

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[rmgeo]

MBBS in Belarus

MBBS in Belarus: Belarus is officially the Republic of Belarus, formerly known by its Russian name Byelorussia. The country has 2 official languages, Belarusian and Russian. When visiting Belarus, tourists first say that it is green, clean, safe, and has excellent roads compared to Russia and Ukraine. The Byelorussian SSR was one of the two Soviet republics that joined the United Nations, and the Ukrainian SSR was one of the original 51 members in 1945. According to November 2011, 58.9% of all Belarusians adhered to some religion; Eastern Orthodoxy (Belarusian Exarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church) made up about 82%.

For more information visit : https://blog.rmgoe.org/mbbs-in-belarus/

[rudyscuriocabinet]

Children's & Youth Choir "Sophia" - Christ Has Risen

Children’s & Youth Choir “Sophia” – Christ Has Risen

No reviews today, as we celebrate the victory of Christ over death itself.  May you, fellow Orthodox and those who celebrate on the Julian Calendar, enjoy Easter! Arabic: El Messieh kahm! Chinese: Helisituosi fuhuole! Czech: Vstal z mrtvých Kristus! Georgian: Kriste aghsdga! Greek: Christos anesti! Latin: Christus resurrexit! Romanian: Hristos a inviat! Russian: Khristos voskrese! Serbian:…

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

https://www.businessinsider.com.au/stepan-latypov-belarus-stabbed-himself-in-the-neck-in-court-2021-6?r=US&IR=T

A Belarusian prisoner detained in protests against President Alexander Lukashenko’s disputed reelection was filmed stabbing himself in court on Tuesday after saying he was tortured and threatened by the police.

According to Viasna, a human rights organization, 41-year-old Stepan Latypov said he had been tortured in a jail cell for 51 days, and that police told him that his family and neighbors would face prosecution if he did not plead guilty to the charges against him.

Latypov then proceeded to stab himself with an object that appeared to be a pen.

A friend of Latypov, named Irina, told Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty that he “took something white in his teeth, and started literally to cut his throat. Everyone started screaming. Police officers could not open the defendant’s cage for awhile. He fell unconscious. We were taken out of the courtroom,” according to Reuters.

Viasna and other local media report that Latypov is still alive, Reuters reports. Belarus’ Health Ministry said that a 41-year-old man who stabbed himself in a courtroom is in stable condition after being treated under anaesthetic, according to Reuters.

Latypov was arrested in September while trying to stop state workers from trying to paint over an opposition mural in his apartment’s courtyard, according to Reuters and The New York Times. He faces charges of organizing riots, resisting police, and fraud, according to Reuters.

There was widespread unrest in Belarus in August and September, when President Lukashenko won reelection by an overwhelming margin – a result the European Union dismissed as fraudulent.

He is one of 454 political prisoners currently behind held by the country’s law enforcement, according to a list published by Viasna.

Latypov’s apparent suicide attempt comes just days after Belarus forced a Ryanair flight traveling from Greece to Lithuania to land, in order to arrest another opposition figure, Roman Protasevich. The EU has responded to that incident by banning Belarusian planes from its airspace and establishing a no-fly zone over the country.

Belarusians have been fleeing the country since the disputed presidential election last summer, but on Tuesday,the country made it hard for those remaining to leave. Now, only those with permanent residencies in other countries will be allowed to leave, according to The Times.

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https://freedomhouse.org/country/belarus/freedom-world/2021

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Stop pretending to be “oppressed” because things aren’t how you prefer them to be.

The oppressed do not have their rights codified into law.

The oppressed have no recourse.

The oppressed cannot change their circumstances.

The oppressed have no voice.

If you can bray at strangers online in pseudo-intellectual jargonese with impunity, you’re not “oppressed.”

If you can get your opponents de-platformed, you’re not “oppressed” - you’re the prevailing orthodoxy.

If you can protest in the streets, you’re not “oppressed.”

If you can @, Tweet or reply to criticize or even vilify unfavored political leaders without someone showing up at your door, you’re not “oppressed.”

If major corporations are virtue-signalling your hashtag, you’re not “oppressed.”

If people failing to virtue-signal your cause or hashtag can get them fired, you’re not “oppressed” - indeed, you’re the oppressor.

If any of these are you, you don’t know what “oppression” is, and you’ve never lived under a “dictator.” No, not even him.

Atheists in most states in the US are not protected from being fired due to their lack of religion. In several states, they cannot hold public office. While this constitutes discrimination, they’re not “oppressed,” because they have recourse with the state. They can launch campaigns, file disputes based on existing laws, protest in the street, decry political leaders, gain public support, whatever they need.

Stop misappropriating the language of people who are helpless and need us to be their voice. It’s narcissistic, histrionic and sociopathic to pretend you and they share a common fate.

They can barely whisper and you’re talking over the top of them making it all about you.

[lightdancer1]

As a helpful bit of context for Russia-Belarus-Ukraine

The recognizable history of these states begins with the medieval Slavic principalities collectively linked as Kyivan Rus. This entire set of medieval history rivals the drinking game worthy history of medieval Germany, aka the Holy Roman Empire (obligatory Voltaire joke reference). The simplest summary is that it began with Kyiv and Veliki Novgorod, and that a blend of succession struggles and opportunism led to the proliferation of city-state appanage regimes ruled by the House of Rurik.

The Principality of Kyiv was the distant ancestor of both Ukraine and Russia, Veliki Gospodin Novgorod and its republic spent medieval history as the most powerful (and literally more democratic than any other medieval republic to boot, additionall!) Russian state. The western principalities of Minsk, Smolensk, and Galicia-Volhynia were ultimately conquered by the Kingdom of Lithuania, which is partially why the medieval kingdom was as massive as it was. Had the Kings of Lithuania adopted Orthodoxy instead of Catholicism we'd be speaking of a Kingdom of Ruthenia with a culturally Lithuanian vibe and not the Tsardom/Empire of Russia.

Batu Khan, son of Jochi, the most dubious to his brothers (for reasons of Mongolian custom that are a long separate story in their own right) steamrolled the Rus principalities and was one of many leaders to reduce Kyiv to a depopulated ghost town for a time. The result of Batu Khan and his Golden Horde was that a certain provincial town that declared itself a Grand Principality named Moscow became in modern eyes a colonialist collaborator, collecting Mongolian money for the Khans, and using what it skimmed off of that to build itself an army. The Boyars of the Grand Principality married so deeply in with the Mongolians that Tsar Boris Gudunov, the immediate successor to the Rurikids, was a straight up Mongolian Tsar of Russia.

The modern history of Russia began with the big armies of the Grand Principality of Moscow conquering its rivals Tver and Vladimir and then expanding outward to every principality it could nab and keep. Belarus was a part of Lithuania for a time, and so was western Ukraine.

At least part of how Ukrainian and Belarusian separated from Russian is the impact of that separate history + the earlier divergences between Northern Rus principalities and the Western and Southern ones.

Kyivan Rus no more makes Kyiv Russian than the Carolingian Empire makes Germany French or France Germany.

[reidio-silence]

Targeting every computer with a Russian or Belarusian IP address with this sort of hacktivism as a means of protest against the actions of a government is patently absurd and harmful. Developers living in countries that commit war crimes, including the US, might want to consider how they would feel if the tables were turned.

This sort of digital xenophobia didn’t start with the Russian military invasion of Ukraine, however. For many years the common network defender orthodoxy has been to block certain countries deemed disreputable from your network, effectively creating no-fly lists for IP addresses. Most traffic coming from Russia or China is malicious, the thinking goes, so why not block all traffic coming from Russian or Chinese IP addresses? Putting aside for a moment the question of whether Russian and Chinese hackers have heard of VPNs, this bit of network security theater ensures that entire countries are thrown under the bus, many of whom might find your service useful, because of a few bad actors.

[sniper-volkov]

Anyway, I decided to open up a lil.

Name's Valentin Stashinsky, or Valiancin Stašynski. Volkov is a nice nickname. Pronouns are he/they (everyone got pronouns learn some 5th grader English). Definitely legal lmao.

I do art. @chekistka is my art tumblr. Really love Soviet art and orthodoxy icons

Actually not Slavic, but hangs a lot on Slavic internet spaces. Hint: I come from largest archipelago country. I spoke Russian well enough to understand things, and to an extent Polish and Belarusian. Also a muzułman.

Just into military but tired of LARPers, and people who overly glorified it. but save it for another discussion.

Yes, I'm a commie. anti-fascist. Can't tolerate people who want to kill my friends after all. Never liked Nazi Germany much besides grabbing images of it for artistic references and friends asking me around.

[cincinnatusvirtue]

Serbo-Bulgarian War of 1885, Balkan nationalism shows its face following centuries of Ottoman rule...

Two nations that have a similar history, culture and predominant religion, yet two separate nations they remain and in 1885, despite their similarities they went to war, the first of many in the modern age.  Those two nations are Bulgaria & Serbia and this is the tale of the brief two-week war that foreshadowed the greater tensions of the Balkan region as well as the power politics of the Great Powers of Europe in the 19th century and rising tides of romantic European nationalism.

Prelude:  Two nations of similar origins, diverge...

-Bulgaria and Serbia share a number of things in common as differences.  In common, they share a common ethnogenesis as Southern Slavs.  Descendants of the Slavic migrations to Southeastern Europe in the 6th and 7th centuries, crossing the Danube into the frontiers of the then Byzantine (Eastern Roman) Empire.  These migrations from their homelands believed to be in Eastern Europe, were said to be numerous and despite Roman attempts to stop them eventually resulted in permanent settlement of the new Southern branch of Slavs.  The Slavs eventually assimilated the local Thracians, Illyrians, Romans and Celts into their own society adopting a common language, customs and identity.

-In Bulgaria, the added mix of a semi-nomadic group of Turkic speaking peoples coming from the Eurasian steppes, known as Bulgars also made its way south of the Danube and in time formed a ruling military elite over the Slavs and Romanized Thracians.  In 681 they formed the First Bulgarian Empire which lasted until the 11th century.  The Bulgars however in time were also assimilated into the Slavic majority of these lands and began to speak the Slavic language, this particular dialect morphed into Old Bulgarian and a true Bulgarian identity formed from these times with the Slavs keeping the names of the Bulgars along with some customs from the Bulgars and the Thracians they absorbed.  They kept the Slavic language and adopted the Eastern Orthodox branch of Christianity from the Byzantines and added that to the Bulgarian cultural identity.  In addition, Bulgarians were among the first to use the Cyrillic alphabet based off of Greek characters.  This alphabet was developed by St. Methodius and Cyril (the alphabet’s namesake) who wanted to have an alphabet to translate the bible as they preached to South Slavs and converted them to Christianity. Soon the Cyrillic alphabet would spread to other Slavic peoples and is used by Bulgarians, Serbs, Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians to this day.

-The Serbs likewise developed their own principality in the 8th-9th centuries and at times fought against the Bulgar expansion, sometimes as allies of the Byzantines who began to see the Bulgars as their greatest rivals in the Balkans.  The Serbs likewise developed their own national identity through its own Southern Slavic dialect and the assimilation of the various peoples into the new Slavic majority.  In time in the Middle Ages, they too adopted the Orthodox faith by 1219 established the Serbian Orthodox Church separate from the Bulgarian or Greek Orthodox branches that had preceded them.  This too became a very centrifugal feature of Medieval Serbian identity.  

-By 1018, the First Bulgarian Empire was reconquered by the Byzantine Empire under the rule of Emperor Basil II “The Bulgarslayer” meanwhile there was a period of anarchy in Serbia that the Byzantines used to invade and restore direct Byzantine rule or the establishment of Byzantine vassalage over more remote Serb areas of rule.

-Circa 1090, the Serbs established their own Grand Principality of Serbia which formed in part due to Byzantine distractions elsewhere since post Basil II the rule of the Byzantine Empire, so rulers who were more or less corrupt or incapable of their responsibility.  The Grand Principality eventually became a kingdom and eventually empire which lasted until the 14th century.

-Bulgaria meanwhile renewed self-rule with the establishment of the Second Bulgarian Empire which came into being in 1185 and would last until almost the 15th century.  

Ottoman Conquest: 14th-19th centuries

-Serbia suffered Ottoman incursions in the 1370′s and 80′s.  Finally matters came to a head in the Battle of Kosovo in June 1389.  The battle was nominally inconclusive and saw the deaths of both ruling Serb Prince Lazar as well as the Ottoman Sultan Murad I.  While technically a draw, the heavy losses on both sides impacted the less numerous Serbs who had less manpower than the Turks.  In time, they became vassals to the Turks with the conquest completed by the mid-15th century.

-Likewise, Bulgaria divided by rival internal struggles by the late 14th century was in a weakened state when the Ottoman Turks completed their conquest circa 1396.

-Both Bulgaria and Serbia saw an influx of Turkish settlers who became landowners while Christians were peasants in many instances.  Both countries saw the establishment of mosques and some efforts at local conversion to Islam, though this was not especially successful but did occur in smaller numbers.  Additionally, the laws of the Ottoman Empire, placed Christians as second class citizens.  Christians for example couldn’t testify in court against Muslims for grievances but Muslims could testify against Christians, eventually separate courts were maintained.  Also, Christians were with some exemptions required to pay the jizya tax which served as nominal recognition of Islam’s primary place in the religious and social hierarchy of the empire.  While they could practice their religion, they had to pay this tax for “protection” as subjects of the sultan.  Furthermore, the Janissaries (elite Ottoman troops) which served as bodyguards to the sultan were derived from Balkan Christian families with young boys being confiscated or given up from their families in order to converted to Islam and brought up for a life of servitude to the sultan and his army.  Sometimes, this was done for a life that was allowed more social advancement than life as a peasant in the Balkans but it was strict and more often than not it was a result of forcible removal, a so called blood tax.  The practice was eventually ended centuries later.        

-There was little note of Bulgarians and Serbs as distinct peoples in the Ottoman millet system, instead they were considered Christians and classified by religion and as Orthodox Christians were included religiously under the Greek run Orthodox Patriarch of Constantinople.  In part, the preservation of uniquely Bulgarian and Serbian aspects of Orthodoxy by monks living in monasteries in remote parts of the country helped to preserve their unique language and cultural elements for future generations.

-While there were numerous rebellions over the centuries, they all failed.  It was not until the Ottoman defeat in the Great Turkish War (1683-1699) which saw the Ottomans defeated by Austria, Hungary, Poland, Russia and Venice that the first cracks in their hold on the Balkans was felt. Austria temporarily controlled Serbia’s Belgrade and northern regions as a frontier region and numerous Serbs found themselves in Austrian territory or serving as frontiersmen soldiers in the Hapsburg military.  Though the Ottomans later regained it, the hope of overthrowing the Turkish yoke seemed somewhat plausible.  

-Indeed as the 18th century progressed, the Ottoman Empire continued to stagnant relative to its European counterparts, in part due to expanding Russian interference and numerous Russian victories in war.  Likewise, national identities were being stirred by the Southern Slavs throughout Ottoman territories.  The French Revolution and subsequent Napoleonic Wars and the related conflicts from them gave birth to a new European romantic movement in art, culture and politics and this lead also found steam in the Balkans.

-The early 19th century saw a Serbian revolution first from 1814-1817 lead by the man known as Karadorde or Black George, it was included Milos Obrenovic.  Both men would leave rival dynasties that would shape Serbia’s future well into the 20th century.  The revolution was brutal in its treatment on both sides and Black George was killed by agents of his rival rebel Obrenovic.  Ultimately, the Serbs prevailed and established a mostly-autonomous principality that self-governed but had to pay tribute to the sultan for this privilege.

-1821-1830 also saw a Greek War of Independence which likewise saw a fully independent Greece revived with help from Britain, France and Russia.  Again, the Ottomans faced numerous internal challenges and could hardly afford a war with the Great Powers of Europe who increasingly showed political and economic influence over the future of the Ottoman Empire which was in need of political and military reform and deeply in debt to foreign creditors.  

-Milos Obrenovic became Prince of Serbia from 1817-1839 and again from 1858-1860.  His dynasty ruled for much of the 19th century and was more aligned with the Austrian Empire and its successor the reformed Austria-Hungary.  While the Karadordevic dynasty had Russia’s backing briefly ruled from 1842-1858 before the Obrenovic resumed control in 1858 and ruled until the 1903.

-Bulgaria for its part was still under Ottoman control but things changed rapidly in 1876 following the April Uprising, the rebellion while suppressed caught international attention.  This was due to the reports of atrocities committed against Bulgarian inhabitants which may have resulted in the deaths of some 20-30,000 people including women and children.  Faced with condemnation political isolation the Ottomans now faced a vengeful Russian Empire, lead by Tsar Alexander II who saw himself as protector of his fellow Orthodox Christians in particular his fellow Slavs in the Balkans from the predations of Ottoman aggression.  Joined by Romania, Montenegro, Serbia and Bulgarian rebels, the Ottomans were soundly defeated by the Russian coalition in the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-1878.

-Fallout from this war saw a fully independent Serbia, Montenegro and Romania no longer paying tribute to the Ottoman Sultan.  In the subsequent Treaty of San Stefano it also saw a greatly enlarged and independent Bulgaria.  However, the Great Powers of Europe, always looking to balance power saw this as too much Russian influence in the Balkans and Serbia, Greece nor Romania felt they could tolerate an enlarged Bulgarian state and so the Congress of Berlin hosted in Germany in 1878 made amendments to this.  It created a smaller semi-independent Bulgaria but left the southern portion with a majority Bulgarian population to become a mostly autonomous region within the borders of the Ottoman Empire proper, called Eastern Rumelia.  This frustrated Bulgarian nationalists but placated Serbs.

-The newly created Principality of Bulgaria had virtual de-facto independence from the Ottomans but remained a nominal vassal of the Turks and would officially remain so until 1908 when it declared unilateral independence, something the Turks would be unable to prevent and have to accept.

-At the head of this new Principality was a German Prince, Alexander of Battenberg, from the House of Hesse-Darmstadt.  Alexander was nephew to the Russian Tsar which made this an agreeable choice. 

-Alexander was caught between Russia which wanted him as their puppet ruler and Bulgarian factions who aggressively wanted to pursue independent actions in the realm of national expansion which could threaten the stability of the region.

-Alexander however did suspend the constitution in 1881 and came into a period of absolute rule, though this alienated the more liberal and radical element of Bulgarian politics.

-Meanwhile, in Serbia Milan IV became Milan I, King of Serbia in 1882.  This elevated status was to give the country more prestige and a sign of its rising influence in the world.  However, Milan was beset by political issues, he was viewed as too influenced by the Austrians who sought to curb Serb and indeed Southern Slav ambition, making him unpopular.  Since the Austrians controlled Slovenia, Croatia and de-facto controlled Bosnia, Serbia’s expansion and Bulgaria’s were viewed as upsetting the balance the Hapsburgs sought to maintain, though a secret treaty tolerated Macedonian expansion by the Serbs.

-Additionally, the Russians were sponsoring anti-Obrenovic elements in the Timok Rebellion of 1883 which lead to government suppression of those elements in Serbia which sought reform of old feudal privileges remaining in Serbian society.  Serbia was very much caught in the power struggle between Austria-Hungary and Russia’s influence along with its own ambitions.

-The leaders of the rebellion sought asylum in Bulgaria and were not returned which caused tension between Bulgaria and Serbia.  However, the real catalyst came in Bulgarian’s unilateral unification of the Principality with Eastern Rumelia, again a part of the Ottoman Empire de jure albeit with a Bulgarian majority.

-The declaration occurred in Plovdiv, capital of Eastern Rumelia in September 1885.  This essentially meant a de-facto expanded Bulgaria, Alexander of Bulgaria endorsed this union by Bulgarian revolutionary nationalists.  Both Bulgaria and Serbia also sought Ottoman Macedonia which had a large ethnic Bulgarian population as well as a number of Serbs and Greeks but at this time it was not included.

-The Plovdiv declaration happened in September and while lauded in Bulgaria was decried elsewhere, namely in Serbia and Greece who felt threatened by a Greater Bulgaria, namely in Macedonia.  Russia didn’t like the development due to what is saw as a loss of influence and it called for a conference in Constantinople  Britain supported this measure but tacitly supported Bulgarian expansion.  France and Germany supported a conference.  Austria-Hungary was opposed since it could mean a Southern Slav state of great power on its southern borders as some point.  Plus it frustrated efforts to have Serbian interests facing southward rather than northward into Austrian held territory.  The Turks weren’t sure how to react, no military action took place as many expected.  In part because the prior Treaty of Berlin forbade unilateral Ottoman intervention in Eastern Rumelia unless at the request of the governor who was Bulgarian though nominally a civil administrator in the Ottoman Empire, no request was made and essentially it became a matter of fact.  Additionally, the Turks were warned by Britain and Russia, either war measures or lack of help would come their way in they took military action, so the Turks likewise were forced to accept the fait accompli.

-The one party who could accept the matter was Milan I of Serbia.  He saw the issue as a way to alleviate his inner turmoil following the Timok Rebellion, he would initiate a war with Austrian support against Bulgaria in opposition to the unification which he hoped would gather popular support from his fellow Serbs and this set into motion the road to war...

War: Two weeks in November to remember...

-Milan was confident of victory, the Serbs had a professional army that had succeeded against the Turks in 1877-78, he thought he had the popular support of his people, he had Austrian secret backing and his army had up to date infantry rifles.  Plus the Bulgarian strategic situation was rife with issues...

-The Bulgarians had placed many troops on the borders of Eastern Rumelia and the rest of the Ottoman Empire, in defense against a Turkish offensive that never came.  The roads of Bulgaria were in muddy poor condition and this created many logistical issues, a Serbian attack from the west would catch the bulk of the army by surprise.  The Bulgarians additionally had no officer structure beyond that of captain in rank as all other higher ranks were at the time held by Russians, its professional army was still very much organizing.  The Russians had withdrawn these officers in protest of the Plovdiv declaration.

-However, Bulgaria had procured modern artillery from other countries, namely Germany and it was superior in quality to the Serbs even if the Serbs had better infantry rifles.  Secondly, their cause was patriotic and unlike the Serbs would have familiarity of the land and popular support of the people, meaning higher morale for their troops.

-The declaration of war from Milan came as a surprise to his own people and troops who initially thought they’d support their Southern Slav brethren in Bulgaria against the Turks as they had before, instead they found themselves planning to invade Bulgaria itself.

-The Bulgarians had to march their troops from Eastern Rumelia on bad roads to the western regions of the country to contain the Serbs.  Their plan was viewed in one of two ways, the one supported by Alexander envisaged surrendering Sofia, the capital without a fight and drawing the Serbs into an overextending line and fighting them.  The other Bulgarian camp sought to contain the Serbs prior to reaching Sofia so as to avoid the political humiliations and potential for the intervention of the Great Powers.  This second plan won out in the end.

-Milan, made many blunders in that he recalled leadership of the army from his best commanders, taking personal command so as to take the glory of the victory he was so self-assured of.  Also fearing the potential mutiny, Milan mobilized only half his troop strength.  Finally, the Serbs were largely untested with their new rifles though of good quality, they had little training rendering them prone to issues in their usage on the battlefield.

-Serbia crossed the border on November 14th a day after the war’s declaration, crossing in three columns aimed towards Sofia.

-Alexander had to move the Bulgarian troops from Eastern Rumelia in the south to the west near the Serbian border to counter this invasion.  This could take five to six days for full strength defense.

-The Bulgarian defenses in place though light managed to tangle up the Serb advance which was dealing with logistical issues of its own, not to mention the aforementioned issues of being untrained in the use of their new rifles.

-The Serbs advanced to Slivnitsa, west of Sofia.  This proved to be the turning point of the war, only 3 days actively in combat at this point.  Here the Bulgarians planned to make their major stand against any Serb drive towards the capital.

-Creating redoubts and trenches along the heights of hilly and mountain ridges in front of the village of Slivnitsa, the Bulgarians could intercept a Serbian advance on the main road to Sofia which needed to pass through the village.  The battle took place from the 17th to 19th of November and saw the concentration of 32,000 Bulgarian troops, including 3 battalions of Macedonian Bulgarian volunteers and 6,000 Muslim Bulgarian volunteers which included ethnic Turks who remained in Bulgaria and Bulgarian converts to Islam (Pomaks).  The Serbs had 40,000 troops mobilized at full strength.  The lack of artillery advanced artillery on the Serb side was serious defect which combined with surprising Bulgarian counter attacks created setbacks for the invaders.

-Ultimately, well timed fresh arrivals from Preslav, Bulgaria saved their weaker left flank which the Serbs tried to break through.  This resulted in horrible casualties for the Serbs as did failures to drive through the center and another flanking move.  Finally, the Bulgarians launched a counter attack all out that drove the Serbs back by surprise, only nightfall prevented a completed pursuit that very night on the 19th.

-However, the Serbs were in full retreat back to Serbia having been unable to break the Bulgarian defenses.

-Bulgaria pursued and now counter-invaded Serbia, crossing the border chasing the Serb army into Eastern Serbia by November 24th.

-The Bulgarians caught up with the Serbs in the first major eastern Serb city of Pirot, where the Serbs held the heights near the city, attempting their own Slivnitsa like defense, to no avail.  The Bulgarians launched a successful flanking maneuver which drove the Serbs from the heights.  The Serbs now retreated Nis, the next major eastern city and began to mobilize their reservists.  As Bulgaria planned to advance on Nis, the Austro-Hungarian ambassador in Sofia, receiving orders from Vienna advised that any further advance or lack to make a ceasefire will result in Austrian intervention along with the other Great Powers.  Vienna wanted a status quo accepted realizing the Serbs had lost and lost badly.  Bulgaria accepted this, having achieved a successful defense of their country, an unexpected counter attack and would be able to claim victory.

-November 28th saw a general ceasefire which held and Bulgaria would honor its agreement to withdraw troops from Serbia following its brief occupation.

-March 3, 1886 saw the Treaty of Bucharest signed in neutral Romania.  No territory was changed, Bulgaria withdrew its troops from Serbia and most importantly, Serbia and the Great Powers accepted the unification of Eastern Rumelia with the Principality of Bulgaria. Meaning a somewhat expanded Bulgaria was now a reality and one to stay.

-In the aftermath, Bulgaria and Serbia had rivalry that only intensified.  Bulgaria saw the war as a betrayal on Serbia’s part, forgoing their common disdain for the Turks and common Southern Slav-Orthodox ethnocultural heritage for Serbia’s interference in Bulgarian affairs.  They also saw it as a vindication of their nationalist ambitions, though this would severely tested in the later Balkan Wars of 1912-13, both as ally of Serbia and rival of it, in the First and Second Balkan Wars respectively.  Namely, both nations rival ambitions over Macedonia along with Greece’s interest in that region would be the catalyst for many issues.

-Additionally, the Serbo-Bulgarian War not only planted the seeds of the Macedonian Question and its rivalry, it didn’t break but it did somewhat tense the Austro-Hungarian and Serbian alliance, which the Serbs saw as increasingly antithetical to its own ambitions and saw a war partially egged on by Austria result in defeat and no gain.  These strains would build over the decades which coupled with Russian influence in Serbia, namely in replacing the Obrenovic dynasty after 1903 with the more Russian friendly Karadordevic dynasty once more would culminate in the outbreak of World War I, following the assassination of the Austrian heir, Franz Ferdinand by Serbian nationalists in Bosnia.

[songs-of-the-east]

The Waning Crescent by Selim Korycki. 

A photography project about the Polish Tatars, Poland's oldest native Muslim population

The Podlasie region of North-Eastern Poland is home to the largest remaining population of Polish Tatars, also known as Lipka Tatars, a Sunni Muslim minority group that have resided in Eastern Europe for more than 600 years. 

Their history in the region begins with Tokhtamysh, who was a prominent Khan of a subdivision of the Golden Horde, a Turkicized entity of the Mongol Empire. Tokhtamysh and his clan were granted asylum in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania by Vytautas the Great. At the beginning of its history the Grand Duchy, a Pagan ruled-state, had come to occupy parts of Poland, Belarus, and Ukraine. Being that it was a multi-ethnic and multi-religious entity ruled by a pagan leader, it developed an early history of religious tolerance as its Pagan leaders were not fond of the idea proselytism, being targets of it themselves by Christian missionaries and conquerors. Eventually the Grand Duchy would combine itself with the Polish Kingdom to create the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. 

For most of its history the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth upheld and legislated the previous values of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Due to these circumstances the Islamic population of the Commonwealth were allowed to mobilize in society freely and practice their religion without fear of persecution, unlike most other parts of Christendom. This religious freedom also brought about more Islamic settlers in the form of Crimean and Nogay Tatars, who would soon be absorbed into the general Polish Tatar population. The Tatars were also granted nobility status and  frequently intermarried with the Polish nobility, however when this occurred it was mostly between those Tatars who converted to Catholicism or Orthodoxy and Christian Polish or Ruthenian nobles. Tatars remained a free people unlike the majority of the non-nobility Christian population in Poland who lived their lives as serfs. They were also permitted to own Christian serfs, again something not seen in most other parts of Europe.The Lipka Tatars were heavily valued as cavalrymen due to their horse-riding skills, and fought against both the Teutonic Knights and later the Ottoman Empire in the Battle of Vienna. despite the fact that this would ensure an Islamic expansion into the rest of Poland. Due to their intermingling with the Slavic and occasionally Baltic populations of the region they quickly lost their language, however other traits of their culture survived, particularly their adherence to Islam. Most Lipka Tatars adopted the Polish or Belarusian languages as their native tongue, but interestingly enough also used the Arabic script when writing those languages. Making them the only Slavic languages outside of Bosnian to have used that form of calligraphy. After the partition of Poland and eventually its independence, most Lipka Tatars ended up living between Poland and Belarus.

The Waning Crescent is a photography project created by Selim Korycki, who had this to say about it:

“Despite being brought up as an atheist, I was always very aware of my family history as well as the history of Lipka Tatars. Following many discussions about rising nationalism and Islamophobia, I realised just how very few people are aware of the Muslim community peacefully settled in the heart of Europe for over 600 years. Knowing that Podlasie region is the only place within today’s Polish borders where Tatars not only lived for generations, but are still present today I decided to execute the project there. This was my first visit to the region,” 

Despite the Polish Tatars influence on Polish history and culture, there has been a lot of misunderstanding of the Tatars since the end of WWII when the country experienced great homogenization and radical assimilation, which increased under the Communist regime. When commenting on the views of many of his countrymen Selim said:

“There is a belief, for example, that Polish Tatars look like Mongolian nomads, that they speak ‘another’ language, and are generally un-Polish. In reality, after 600 years of assimilation, Poles of Tatar heritage are mostly [indistinguishable] from the rest of the population. Just as their parents, their grandparents and their great-grandparents they speak Polish, think Polish, feel Polish, have Polish surnames, eat Polish food.” At the same time Polish Tatars cultivate their culture by practicing Islam, preserving traditional Turkic names, and nurturing traditional Tatar cuisine (Central Asian dishes with Eastern European influence).

Today when less than 5% of the population of Poland consider themselves to be a member of an ethnic minority, and over 85% Poles declares themselves to be Roman Catholic; the Lipka Tatars are a striking reminder that Poland was once a hugely multicultural and multi-religious country”

[nanshe-of-nina]

Wizarding Russian Empire and USSR || Oksana Iosifovna Lutsenko (3 February 1873 – 14 July 1940)

Oksana Iosifovna Lutsenko was born 3 February 1873 in Odessa. She was the daughter of a well-to-do zemlyanin doctor named Iosif Viktorovich Lutsenko and a rozhdennyy zemley named Olena Milovanovna Rosenbaum. Iosif’s mother had been born a Belarusian Jew, but she had converted to Eastern Orthodoxy before she married his Gentile father. Olena had been been born the daughter of an Orthodox rabbi, but she abandoned her faith in her early teens.

Her mother was a friend of the squib and rozhdennyy zemley rights activist, Semela Zinovyevna Horenko (ironically, the mother of the future KDMM terrorist, Olimpiya Feodorovna Zmeyeva), who pulled strings to ensure that Oksana and her three younger sisters —Aleksandra, Lyudmila, and Draga— would be permitted to attend Koldovstortez despite its annual quotas on rozhdennyy zemley.

Education Lutsenko attended Koldovstortez from 1883 until 1891. She was an excellent student and an overachiever who enjoyed regularly showing up other students, especially those from Old Pureblood families. Much to her annoyance, though, not all them were bothered that because many of the Pureblood students had the attitude that they’d succeed regardless of how well they they did in school. This left her with a lifelong loathing of Old Purebloods as a group, who she characterized as (not necessarily wrongly) as generally self-satisfied, complacent, and lazy.

Marriage and Revolutionary Life Due in part to her experiences at school, Oksana became involved in anti-Volshebyni Duma activities at the tender age of sixteen. In 1891, shortly after completing her studies, Lutsenko was arrested for distributing revolutionary pamphlets, but released after only be held for a month. Despite her mother's general liberalism, her father was quite conservative and neither approved for her radicalism, but she elected not to listen to them. Also in 1891, she become engaged to a school friend and fellow revolutionary, Stanislav Ivanovich Moskhovsky.

However, in 1892, she re-met her married second cousin, Vladimir Ilarionovich Lutsenko, who had escaped from exile in Siberia and fell in love with him. In 1894, she dumped Moshovsky and he abandoned his first wife, Olga Semyonovna Yakovleva, by whom he had had twin daughters, and they eloped. Though they never actually married because Vladimir was technically still married to another woman, they quickly had two sons, Viktor and Ilarion. However, in 1896, both were sent into exile and they sent their eldest sons to live with her parents. They managed to escape from Siberia two years later and fled to Switzerland and later, Austria. In 1899, her mother brought to their two sons to them in Austria, as neither Oksana or Vladimir could go back to the Russian Empire without risking arrest. They went on to have two other sons, Vitaly and Avel, in 1899 and 1901.

The Lutsenkos came to be regarded as a unit and became heavily involved in the revolutionary community abroad. In the 1899, they first met Nikolai Savvich Babushkin and Mariamna Timofeyevna Gretskaya, the co-founders of the Obshchina Ved’m i Volshebnikov. However, Babushkin and Gretskaya had a falling out in 1901 and they split the group into the Bratstvo Koldunov and Shabash Volshebnikov. The Lutsenkos went with Gretskaya, provoking Babushkin’s wrath by doing so.

However, Babushkin’s number two, Nestor Diogenovich Levandovsky was slightly more sympathetic to them and in 1904, invited them to live with him; his wife, Aglaonika Ptolemeyevna Zvezdova; and their two daughters in Corsica. Also invited was Yefrem Iosifovich Levandovsky (of no relation to Nestor) and his wife, who also happened to be Oksana’s younger sister, Draga. This experiment did not end well. Oksana and Yefrem spent all their time arguing, so he and Draga departed after only four weeks. Meanwhile, Zvezdova was annoyed that the Lutsenkos were unwilling to help with the household’s upkeep and that their four sons kept bullying her daughters. Normally a mild-mannered person, she finally had a meltdown after about two months and told them to get out.

Afterwards, the family moved to Vienna where Lutsenko first met her lifelong friends, Berenika Ilyinichna Tsanapas, an Old Pureblood of Romaniote Jewish descent, and Zdravko Vlajković, a Serbian exile from a wealthy Old Pureblood family. After the outbreak of World War I, they were forced to flee Austria for France. In 1916, Anfisa Zoranovna Krupina invited them to Massachusetts in the United States, where she was living with her family and a half-Czech, half-Russian witch named Lyudmila Konvalinkova (future second wife of A.A. Kostov). They took up Krupina on her offer and lived there until they all heard that the Volshebny Duma had been disbanded.

Revolution Upon their return to the Russian Empire, the Lutsenkos both joined in the BK, though their eldest son, Viktor, briefly stayed in Sweden with his French wife, Yseult Raguenel, who had been denied entry as a foreigner. 

In 1918, the Lutsenkos became the joint Commissars of Defense and recruited former Aurors who had served under the Volshebny Duma. In practice, Oksana was the spokesman and orator while Vladimir took a more behind-the-scenes role. During this time, Oksana quickly won the undying hatred of, among others, the Latvian Auror, Auseklis Ivanovich Lielzeltins  and the half-Tatar, half-Armenian Commissar, Afanasiy Anastasovich Kostov. Both Babushkin and Zakhariya Finesovich Krapivin tried to reconcile Lutsenko and Kostov, but failed.

Meanwhile, in 1919, Lutsenko won herself another powerful enemy in Zaria Kresnikovna Krasavkina, the Vedma of Ledenets. After hearing that the VSDP Auror, S.V. Medvedev had landed on Buyan and was headed to attack Ledenets (while M.I. Volkov was simultaneously heading to attack Lysaya Gora), Krasavkina had a nervous breakdown and ran around, gave conflicting orders, and refused to sleep. Upon her own arrival in the city to led the defense, Lutsenko publicly smacked Krasavkina across the face and called her a disgrace. The two then proceeded to have an argument while Asteropa Melanionovna Zeltabole and Violetta Dmitriyevna Solovieva were left to work out an (ultimately successful) plan to rout Medvedev and his followers. Eventually, Lutsenko’s pregnant daughter-in-law, Yseult, eventually managed to break up the argument and, in the end, both Medvedev and Volkov were defeated.

By this point, Lutsenko considered the Civil War all but won and devoted most of her attention to arguing about economic and social policies. This meant that she was completely taken by surprise when, in the spring of 1921, a group of renegade Aurors stormed the heavily fortified wizarding school of Koldovstoretz, took it over, and promptly issued a series of demands that included (but weren’t limited to) the dismissal of Krasavkina as the Vedma of Ledenets, a free press, tighter restrictions on the Zhnetsy and the end of the Terror, the waiver of fees to attend Koldovstortez and allowance of halfbreeds to attend, equal rights for non-humans, and so on. This event proved to be a major embarrassment for both Lutsenko, as most of the rebellious Aurors involved were people she had constantly vouched for and its leader, Koliada Cholodenko, was one of her proteges. However, the revolt was then crushed by a combination of Aurors and Zhnetsy with extreme brutality.

Power Struggles in the 1920s Beginning in the fall of 1921, Babushkin’s health rapidly deteriorated and in his absence, the Sovet Koldunov rapidly became a hotbed of intrigue. In February 1922, the two heads of the Zhnetsy, Marena Volosovna Kulchytskaya and Devana Ipabogovna Zalischenko, attempted to worn Lutsenko that Kostov, Krasavkina, and Levandovsky were plotting against her and advised her to seek powerful allies quickly, but thought they were threatening her and ignored them. Instead, of seeking allies, she devoted her attention to writing articles critical of the decisions of her fellow members of the Sovet Koldunov, which won her few friends. Meanwhile, in 1922, her husband fell ill and was sent to the Caucasus to recover.

By 1923, a loose group of malcontents gathered around Lutsenko. They included her old friends, Zdravko Vlajković and Berenika Tsanapas, as well as Volos Leshyevich Dubovich, Inessa Alekseyevna Ehrlich, Germes Afinodorovich Golubtsov, Vlasiy Dariyevich Kravtsovich, Lyudovik Ul’rikovich Nemeczek, Vera Sergeyevna Podgornova, Veronika Faddeyevna Popova, and Asteropa Melanionovna Zeltabole. The brains behind their group was undoubtedly Fekla Germogenovna Filaretova, a priest’s daughter turned revolutionary and economist. In 1925, they gained new allies in Yefrem Levandovsky and Zaria Krasavkina would have quarreled with Kostov and his decision to pursue a new alliance with Anfisa Krupina and Nestor Feodorovich Voinov. By 1926, the only prominent members of the BK who still believed in reconciliation were Kulchytskaya and Mirina Feodorovna Voinova, but the latter died of an illness that year and the former fell dreadfully ill while nursing Voinova through her final illness and almost died.

In 1927, the Opposition abruptly collapsed after Krasavkina and Levandovsky and their followers chose to defect. Not long after, so did some of the other so-called Lutsenkoists, who found themselves stripped of the BK membership, exiled to remote locations, and unable to find employment. 

Exile In 1928, she, her husband, and their three oldest sons and their sons’ families were all deported to Rostov-on-Don in January 1928. In October 1928, they were expelled from the Soviet Union to the Mandate for Syria and the Lebanon. (The youngest son, Avel, uninterested in politics, was permitted to stay in the USSR with his family.) Soon after they were joined by Polina, Vladimir’s daughter by his first marriage. In December, Vladimir, who had been ill since 1922, finally died. Still dreaming that they met return to the USSR someday, Lutsenko had him cremated and kept his ashes with her so that he could be buried someday in his homeland.

By 1929, virtually all of the Lutsenkoists had recanted. The few exceptions included Tsanapas, who had committed suicide with her daughter's assistance in November 1928, and Vlajković. In 1930, her eldest son, Viktor, emigrated to France with his French-born wife, Yseult, their children, and Polina while Vitaly traveled to Germany. After repeatedly lobbying the French ministry, Yseult managed to convince them to grant the rest of the Lutsenkos asylum there. Oksana and Ilarion lived in the south, near the Pyrenees, while Viktor and Polina were permitted to live in Paris. This arrangement was short-lived: in 1935, the French Ministry deported her to Algeria and Ilarion elected to accompany her.

In the last days of September 1936, there was another shocking development: Krasavkina, Levandovsky, Golubtsov, and others were put on trial in the USSR where they confessed to all matter of terrorism and destruction, specifically at the specific instruction of the exiled Lutsenkos. The defendants were all executed after the trial and death sentences were also passed against Oksana and three of her sons.

A week after the first Show Trial, Ilarion went for a walk in town outside their home and was ambushed and murdered. The assailants were never caught and their motives are unclear, but the timing made it possible it was an assassination. After Ilarion’s death, Viktor and Polina visited her. It didn’t end well: the depressed Polina, while she didn’t think the charges of terrorism were true, still blamed her stepmother for the deaths of her half-brother, their former comrades as well as her father and her twin sister, Alyona (who had succumbed to an illness in 1933). The argument almost became physical, but Viktor put himself between his mother and half-sister until they both calmed down. Nevertheless, shortly after her return to France, Polina committed suicide by throwing herself into the Seine.

Meanwhile, the repression of the Lutsenkos left in the USSR had began in earnest: Oksana’s two surviving sisters, Lyudmila and Draga; her youngest son, Avel; his wife, Maria Feodorovna Sverchkova; Vladimir’s first wife, Olga Semyonovna Yakovleva; and Alyona’s widower were all arrested and exiled to Central Asia or sent to Vyraj. None were to emerge alive, baring some of their children.

In December 1936, Lutsenko was offered asylum in Cuba and went there with her third son, Vitaly; his German-born wife, Alraune Schwarzwald; and their daughter, Perkhta, while Viktor and his second wife, Mila Lavrentiyevna Vishnova, stayed behind in France. In Cuba, Lutsenko devoted herself mainly to writing and attempting to debunk the over-the-top claims of the first two show trials.

However, further tragedies were still to occur. In August 1938, Viktor and Mila were both assassinated in Paris as part of an operation organized by the head of the foreign intelligence department of the Zhnetsy, Orfna Orfeyevna Olenenko, in a last ditch attempt to save herself. (It didn’t work; she was arrested that October and executed 18 March 1940.) Afterwards, a custody battle broke out over Viktor’s four children and Polina’s daughter, Antonina Feodosiyevna Levonova, between Oksana and Viktor’s ex-wife, Yseult. Yseult was willing to let Antonina and Viktor’s two children by Mila go to Cuba, but was completely opposed to the thought of relinquishing her own children. In the end, Yseult won.

Final Years By this point, Oksana was suffering from increasingly poor health, but chose to remain optimistic. Vitaly, however, thought their days were numbered and contemplated killing his second wife, Urraca Fernández, and his two children to protect them from the agents of the Zhnetsy, but didn’t go through with it.

Unbeknownst to Vitaly and Oksana, however, they had already met the main instruments of their destruction in three Gascon cousins named Rufino Cavaller and Rosemonde and Blanche Reina, who had been recruited to act as agents in 1934 by the Zhnetsy, Yuri Dmitriyevich Astapienia and Fekla Mitrofanovna Ponomarenko, while the two of them had been stationed there. Cavaller and the Reinas had befriended Viktor in 1938 by posing as sympathizers with the connivance of their fellow spy, Vasilisa Viktorovna Herzberg. Though the defector Zhnets, Zlata Bogdanovna Sorokina had warned the Lutsenkos in 1938 that someone in their inner circle was a spy, it seems that none of them chose to listen to her.

In 1939, shortly after Viktor's death, Praskovya Ivanovna Lytovchenko, a close friend of the late Mila Vishnova, and Cavaller and Rosemonde magnanimously offered to take Viktor’s two children and Polina’s daughter to Cuba (Blanche remained behind in France) and so gained Oksana and Vitaly’s trust. (Though Lytovchenko’s role in the operation was at first unknown, it seems clear now that she had no idea that Herzberg, Cavaller, and the Reina sisters were, in fact, spies.)

Afterwards, Cavaller and Rosemonde effectively posed as Lutsenkoist sympathizers, all while they secretly passed information to Blanche back in France. In June 1940, Blanche and Astapienia traveled to Cuba as well and laid out a plan: late at night, Rosemonde would kill Vitaly while Cavaller took care of Oksana and before anyone knew what had happened, they would slip out and escape together. But the plan did not go as planned. 

On the night of 14 July 1940, Cavaller gave Oksana a poisoned cup of tea and cookies, but grew nervous when she didn’t touch either of them. Afraid that she was on to him, he panicked and began fumbling around for his wand, but dropped it, and then stepped on it, breaking it in half. Not knowing else to do, he picked up a cauldron in the corner of the room and repeatedly bashed her over the head with it.

Meanwhile, Rosemonde was in the bedroom preparing to the smother the sleeping Vitaly to death with a pillow when the commotion in the study woke him. He shoved her aside and attempted to run to aid his mother, but was prevented from doing so when she ran after him, firing curses, before eventually managing to kill him.

After two hours passed without an appearance from Rosemonde or Cavaller, Blanche and Astapienia figured that things had gone awry and fled to Florida where they discovered that the assassination had succeeded, though not quite in the way they’d intended. Rosemonde and Cavaller were both arrested by Cuban Aurors, yet refused to admit who they were working for, though no one seriously doubted that Kostov had ordered it.

Aftermath Afterwards, the only adult family members left alive were her surviving daughters-in-law, Yseult Raguenel (first wife of Viktor) and Alraune Schwarzwald and Urraca Fernández (wives of Vitaly). Yseult worked often with the French-born Russian writer, Goderna Vladimirovna Oleneva, and insisted until her dying day that time would prove the innocence of her in-laws. Fernández also shared this belief, but how Schwarzwald felt is unknown, because she refused to speak of it.

In 1942, Artur Lutsenko, Viktor’s son by his French first wife, was killed by followers of Grindelwald. Seven years later, Taras Lutsenko, Avel’s only son died mysteriously, in what was later admitted to have been an execution. After being released from Vyraj in 1951, Draga and Lyudmila Lutsenko (daughters of Avel) were evicted from the USSR and chose to move to New York, where they were later joined by their cousin, Oksana, the daughter of Viktor and Mila Vishnova.

[severnayastolitsa]

I mentioned wanting to introduce some NPCs (read: other OCs that are related to Alexei that I’m too lazy to make blogs for) so here’s my Carpathian Ruthenia OC! His name is Vasyl and he’s Alexei’s uncle, technically. He represents the Rusyns, a small but distinct East Slavic ethnic group inhabiting the Carpathian mountains. I’ve drawn him here in folk costume from the Lemkovyna region of Slovakia and Poland, which is where part of my family originates from-- I’m actually Lemko, which is what Rusyns in Slovakia and Poland are often called. Rusyns are set apart from their Russian, Ukrainian, and Belarusian cousins due to their being predominantly Byzantine Rite Catholic as opposed to Eastern Orthodox, though one might argue that Byzantine Rite Catholicism is closer to Eastern Orthodoxy than it is to Roman Catholicism. I digress. Being a mountain people, herding animals like sheep and goats has historically been a big part of their livelihood, which is why Vasyl here has a shepherd’s crook as part of his get up. 

They’re a predominantly diasporic ethnic group; many emigrated to America and Canada during the 19th century, as the Austro-Hungarian province of Galicia, where most Rusyns lived was among the poorest in Europe. Though you may never have heard of Carpathian Ruthenia, you’ve definitely heard of a few of its sons and daughters: pop artist Andy Warhol, actress Sandra Dee, comic artist and creator of Spider-Man Steve Ditko, and jazz musician Bill Evans are just a few notable figures of Rusyn origin. 

[rudyscuriocabinet]

Choir Of Beirut - Al Yaoum Youladou Mina Al Batoul

Choir Of Beirut – Al Yaoum Youladou Mina Al Batoul

In honor of celebrating Christmas according to the Julian Calendar, we will not be posting reviews today, so we wish to all of you, the faithful, and to our beloved friends, a wonderful Nativity season, a placid Eid and a Happy Hanukkah.  May we be rejuvenated in the new year.

[cactusnotes]

The Russian Empire in 1855

This was a time of great division: between Tsar and subjects, rich and poor, and race. It was an autocratic empire: an ‘unlimited monarch’, guided by autocracy, orthodoxy and nationality who had supreme power ruling over lesser states making a sixth of the earth’s surface and the Orthodox Church.

 The Over-Procurator of the Holy Synod ruled over the relationship between Church and state. His edicts (laws) were final. His guidance was from a council he chose- personal Chancellery, Imperial Council of State, Council of Ministers and Senate. The different government parts run by 8-14 nobles were not really significant. Nobles were all expected to serve the Tsar. Civil servants in the Bureaucracy government were selected from a ‘table of ranks’ from 14 to 1, 1 being the best, in a system full of corruption. 

They had the largest army of 1.5 million serfs, and it and the navy took 45% of government spending. There was an elite army of Cossacks used by the tsar as personal bodyguards. The autocratic state was maintained through being a police state enforced by a ‘third section’, maintaining censorship, lack of freedom, and isolation from the West. With a population of 69 million, ruling was difficult.  

Russian economy was based off village work, with the town:village ratio being 1:1. It’s income was mainly based off mined materials and agriculture, with most of the resources being in isolated land (only ¼ of the population lived in ¾ of the landmass), and income based on serfs. This meant fewer ‘wage earners’, and the work of many people contributed to one wage (the nobles).  There were few entrepreneurs and markets that allowed for competition which meant economic development. Markets existing often worked in trade of goods rather than money. Many nobles were in debt as their serfs were inefficient, but didn’t seek out other forms of earning money. Agriculture was still based on old, worse methods. 

The society was still divided between privileged, non-productive clergy, nobility and royals, and productive serfs, and tiny middle class of urban artisans and merchants. The tax poll was the main tax paid by all but merchants, and other taxes like salt taxes and obrok (for serfs) were implemented. 90% of government was funded by the peasants and urban workers. Just under half the population was Russian. 

Another division in society was in ethnicity- two thirds were Slavs, Ukranian, and Belarusian, but the other third was generally the Northern European Russian nations- Finnish and Latvian for example, but these were owned by Lutherean Germans, which caused huge conflict. There were also Catholic Poles, Jews from several nations, and people of a Muslim origin finding themselves in Russia. 

This lead to a want of Russification- enforcing Russian culture on others, reducing National Ideology. They were met with uprisings, secret brotherhoods and underground schools. Since 1791, a Pale of Settlement, occupying 20% of European Russia, was made for Jews. Antisematisn was due to their stereotypes, religious blame for Jesus, how they crushed opposition, and later since they were believed to be central to opposition groups.

[hoshvilim]

היכונו למסע צליינות וחיפוש אחר מקורות המשפחה שלי ברוסיה הלבנה – הן מצד אבא והן מצד אמא. הצטרפו למסע אשתי היקרה ואחי הבוגר שהגיע במיוחד מקליפורניה.

מינסק היא עיר הבירה של בלארוס (רוסיה לבנה) והעיר הגדולה ביותר בה. בני משפחתי לא היו תושבי מינסק, אבל מינסק היא נמל התעופה הראשי לכניסה ל״רוסיה הלבנה״. תולדות העיר משקפות ומשפיעות על בני משפחתי שהתגוררו בעיירה סמוכה (בוגושביץ) ומאוחר יותר בעיר סמוכה (בוריסוב). הפוסט הזה יסקור תולדות בלארוס, תולדות מינסק, הפלישה של גרמניה הנאצית, תולדות הקהילה היהודית במינסק, והשואה במינסק. אתרי הנצחת קרבנות השואה סביב מינסק:- אנדרטת הבור (יאמא), מאלי טרוסטינץ (Maly Trostenets Memoria) יוצגו בפוסט נפרד.

My brother, Prof. Benjamin Jerry Cohen, and I, have come to Belarus to reunite with the roots of our family. Our journey took us through Minsk (Yama and Maly Trostinets), Khatyn, Borisov, Shklov, Mogilev, Bogushevichi, and Smilavichy. This was our itinerary. Each city was reported in a separate post in this blog. One city has a sad “story” and another has a happy “story”. Borisov was the home of all our aunts and uncles on the “Cohen” side. Not one of them survived the Holocaust. On the other hand, Shklov was the home of our family on the “Grossman” side who were all smart enough to leave Russia before WWI. All of them survived in Canada. Bogushevichi was the home of our father for 23 years until he escaped Soviet Russia and immigrated to the USA. All his siblings were murdered in the Holocaust. My brother and I  both want to walk on the ground where our father grew up.

מה אומרים מורי דרך על מינסק – What do tour guides have to say about Minsk

שדה התעופה הלאומי של מינסק (Minsk National Airport) מודרני ונקי. אבל בביקורת הגבולות בודקים באטיות כל דף של דרכונך בזכותית מגדלת ומצלמים כל עמוד (אולי בשביל קג״ב?). הנהיגה במינסק ובכל בלארוס פראית. כאן מותר לעשות סיבוב פרסה באמצע כביש לאומי של ששה מסלולים. אין בעיה לדבר אנגלית:- פשוט אף אחד לא מבין. לעומת זאת העיר נקיה להפליא והתושבים ידידותיים.

There are more than 20,000 rivers and creeks and about 11,000 lakes in Belarus but is a landlocked country. One third of the territory of Belarus is covered by forests. It borders five other states. Belarus is sometimes called the ‘Lungs of Europe’ for its countless forests, rivers and lakes. Belarus is not a member of the Schengen Area and is not a member of the European Union (EU). Belarus was the smallest of the three Slavic republics included in the Soviet Union (the larger two being Russia and Ukraine).

Some places in Belarus would accept Dollars or Euros. Normal payment currency in Belarus is the local BYR, but bring in USD or EUR. Bank cards are widely used in Belarus. You can use them in shops, hotels, restaurants and self-service kiosks. The most widespread international payment systems in Belarus are Visa and MasterCard.

New Belarusian rubles can puzzle tourists who come with euros in the pocket. The reason is simple – the new banknotes are almost similar in size, design, and even colors to the currency of the EU. So be careful and don’t confuse the two! All major streets are wide and are illuminated when it gets darker. So, even at night, you can feel safe in the capital of Belarus. Minsk is definitely worth a visit.

Christianity is the main religion in Belarus, with Eastern Orthodoxy being the largest denomination. The legacy of the state atheism of the Soviet era is evident in the fact that a large part of the Belarusians are not religious. According to the 2009 national census, there were 12,926 self-identifying Jews in Belarus. The Jewish Agency estimates the community of Jews in Belarus at 20,000.

כלל גדול בהנצחה בבלארוס: אחד מכל ארבעה תושבי רוסיה הלבנה נרצח על ידי הנאצים ימ״ש. כאן נרצחו במחלחמת העולם השניה רק ״אזרחי רוסיה הלבנה״ ולמרות שרובם היו יהודים לא מציינים את דתם.

בתי כנסת בבלארוס –  Synagogues in Belarus

בסיור שלנו נבקר בבתי כנסת בערים בוריסוב ומנסק. ביתר הערי בנן נשהה כבר אין בתי כנסת.

Synagogues in Belarus

בית כנסת חב״ד Synagogue Chabad  (פעיל-Minsk Jewish Community Synagogue      –     (Active

Synagogue Chabad Lubavitch of Minsk –  ul. Kropotkina 22 – ул. Кропоткина, 22

בנין בית הכנסת הוקם בשנת 1910. במשך שנים רבות היה סגור. רק בשנות ה-90 של המאה ה-20 הוחזר המבנה לקהילה היהודית באופן רשמי.

Phone: 375-29-330-6675           Local Time: 11:16 AM (GMT +3)       www.JewishMinsk.com   Rabbi Shneur Deitch, Chief Rabbi          Mrs. Basya Deitch, Director          Meal Hashgacha: Rav Sirota

    מחוץ לבית כנסת חב״ד- Outside Minsk Jewish Community Synagogue

   מחוץ לבית כנסת חב״ד – Inside Minsk Jewish Community Synagogue

Synagogue furniture

מפה לבית חב״ד – Map to Chabad House

בית כנסת בית ישראל – Synagogue Beis Yisrael (פעיל-Actibe)

 Synagogue Beit Yisrael –  Daumana  St. 13 B Minsk, 220002  – Phone: +375-172-345612

   Paintings of once Belarus Synagogues in Beis Yisrael Synagogue – צילומי בתי כנסת בבלארוס המקשטים בית כנסת בייס ישראל

(All photos with permission of Beis Yisrael Synagogue)

בית הכנסת הריפורמי – Association of Progressive Jewish Congregations

Association of Progressive Jewish Congregations – Internatzionalnaya St. 16

בית כנסת קורל – Choral Synagogue   (לא פועל-No longer a synagogue)

Former Minsk Choral synagogue 5 Volodarskaya Street now Gorky National Drama Theatre

After the revolution, the Choral Synagogue fell to perform exclusively cultural roles – it was a Jewish theater, a House of Culture, a cinema with 1,2 thousand seats and, finally, in 1947, the Russian Theater created in Bobruisk moved there. The building of the former Choral Synagogue, which was rebuilt after the war, where the National Academic Drama Theater named after Maxim Gorky is now located, now looks different. Fragments of the old masonry can be seen only from the courtyard. מינסק – צילום: Jewish-Tour

  Where is Minsk – היכן מינסק

העיר מינסק ממוקמת על גדות הנהרות סוויסלאץ’ – Svislač ו-ניאמיהה -Nyamiha. כבירה הלאומית, למינסק מעמד מיוחד בבלארוס והיא המרכז המנהלי של פרובינציית מינסק ושל מחוז מינסק. בעיר מתגוררים כ-2,002,600 תושבים, ושטחה הכולל הוא כ-305.47 קמ”ר.

Minsk is the capital and largest city of Belarus, situated on the Svislač and the Nyamiha Rivers. The population in January 2018 was 1,982,444, making Minsk the 11th most populous city in Europe.

Minsk. Gift Card. Synagogue in the letter “k”. the beginning of the 20th century

The Name of the City – שם העיר מינסק

כתיב שם העיר משתנה בהתאם ללאום: בבלארוסית: Мінск, ברוסית: Минск, בפולנית: Mińsk. מקור שם העיר אינו נהיר. יתכן שזה קשור לנהר בשם Měn . אין קשר בין מינסק והעיר הפולנית מינסק.

Where did the Jews of Minsk come from?מאיפה באו יהודי מינסק

Jewish immigration from Germany eastward

תולדות מינסק – History of Minsk

The earliest historical references to Minsk date to the 11th century (1067), when it was noted as a provincial city within the Principality of Polotsk. In 1242, Minsk became part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. It received town privileges in 1499. From 1569, it was a capital of the Minsk Voivodeship, in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. It was part of a region annexed by the Russian Empire in 1793, as a consequence of the Second Partition of Poland.

Holocaust in Reichskommissariat Ostland, which included Soviet Belarus WW2-Holocaust-Europe.png WW2-Holocaust-ROstland.PNG יוצר WW2-Holocaust-Europe.png: User:Dna-Dennis                                                                                                             מפת מחנות המוות בבלארוס

ההיסטוריה של מינסק דומה לתולדות שקלוב ובוריסוב: נוסדה על ידי העמים הסלאביים המאות ה-6 וה-8 לספירה. בלארוס רואה את עצמה כאחת מיורשותיה (יחד עם רוסיה ואוקראינה) של רוּס” – הכינוי העתיק יותר לארץ הסלאבים המזרחיים שמרכזה היה בקייב.

Rus’ principalities before the Mongol and Lithuanian invasions מפה: SeikoEn                    מפת האיזור של בלארוס בשנים 1220-1240

במאות ה-9 וה-10 נכלל ב-פולאצק. ב-1129 סופחה על ידי קייב. ב-1146 השליטה בנסיכות חזרה לשושלת פולוצק. במאה ה-13 נכלל ב-הדוכסות הליטאית הגדולה. ב-1569, יצר איחוד לובלין את האיחוד הפולני-ליטאי.

הדוכסות הליטאית הגדולה, מפה מאת טוביאס לוטר (Tobias Lotter)‏, 1780                                                Map of The Grand Duchy of Lithuania 1780

ב-1569, יצר איחוד לובלין את האיחוד הפולני-ליטאי-רפובליקת שני העמים – The Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth

Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1582 יוצר: User:Mathiasrex Maciej Szczepańczyk, based on layers of User:Halibutt  –                                                                       האיחוד הפולני-ליטאי, הידוע גם כרפובליקת שני העמים

מינסק שרדה גלי הרס נוראים. אפשר להגיד שאלימות בדם שלה. (1) גל ההרס הראשון היה הפלישה המונגולית לרוס בשנים 1237–1239. (2) גל ההרס השני היה במלחמת רוסיה-פולין (1654–1667). (3) גל ההרס השלישי היה במלחמה הצפונית הגדולה ב-1708 וב-1709.

ב-1795 לאחר חלוקתה של הממלכה המאוחדת של פולין וליטא, עבר שטחה של בלארוס לאימפריה הרוסית. בני העם הבלארוסי, אוניאטים ברובם, אולצו להמיר את דתם לנצרות פרבוסלבית, ונערכה רוסיפיקציה של התושבים.

בסוף המאה ה-19 אוכלוסית היהודים היתה 45% של העיר מינסק. היו יותר בתי כנסת במינסק מכנסיות. היה רחוב יהודי בו (היום נקרא רחוב קולקטורנאיה) רוכזו גלי הילדים, בתי הספר

ב-1915, העיר הייתה עיר חזית. מספר מפעלים נסגרו והתושבים התחילו להתפנות למזרח. מינסק נהפכה למפקדה של החזית המערבית של הצבא הרוסי והייתה בית לבתי חולים צבאיים ולבסיסי אספקה צבאיים. לאחר מהפכת אוקטובר ב-1917 הוכרזה עצמאותה של הרפובליקה העממית של בלארוס.  בשנים 1918-1921 מינסק ובלארוס עברו ידים בין האדומים, הלבנים, הגרמנים, והפולנים. ב-1921, לפי הסכם ריגה נמסרה העיר לרוסיה ונהפכה לבירת הרפובליקה הסובייטית הסוציאליסטית של בלארוס – אשר ב-1922 הפכה לאחת המייסדות של ברית המועצות.

The First World War affected the development of Minsk tremendously. By 1915, Minsk was a battle-front city. Some factories were closed down, and residents began evacuating to the east. Minsk became the headquarters of the Western Front of the Russian army.

The Russian Revolution had an immediate effect in Minsk. A Workers’ Soviet was established in Minsk in October 1917, drawing much of its support from disaffected soldiers and workers. After the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, German forces occupied Minsk on 21 February 1918. On 25 March 1918, Minsk was proclaimed the capital of the Belarusian People’s Republic. The republic was short-lived. In December 1918, Minsk was taken over by the Red Army. In January 1919 Minsk was proclaimed the capital of the Belorussian SSR. Later in 1919 (see Operation Minsk) and again in 1920, the city was controlled by the Second Polish Republic during the course of the Polish-Bolshevik War between 8 August 1919 and 11 July 1920 and again between 14 October 1920 and 19 March 1921.

Under the terms of the Peace of Riga, Minsk was handed back to the Russian SFSR (Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic) and became the capital of the Belorussian SSR, one of the founding republics of the USSR (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics).

הקהילה היהודית של מינסק – The Jewish Community of Minsk

קהילת היהודים במינסק הייתה בין החשובות במזרח אירופה.התפתחותה דומה לזו של העיר שקלוב.

ב-1489 יהודי התמנה על גביית מיסים בעיר מטעם השלטון הליטאי.

יהודים התחילו להתיישב בעיר במאה ה-16.

ב-1579 המלך סטפאן באטורי הוציא אישור ליהודים לסחור בעיר. המלך זיגמונט השלישי ואזה ביטל אישור זה ב-1606 בעקבות פניית הנוצרים. אולם ב-1609 היהודים שוחררו ממסים מיוחדים.

ב-1616 הורשה להם לפרוס בעיר את מרכולתם.

ב-1629 הורשו לפתוח חנויות.

בזמן המלחמה הפולנית-רוסית (1667-‏1654) נטשו היהודים את העיר בעקבות הכיבוש הרוסי ב-1655, אך בחזרתה לפולין ב-1658 חזרו גם היהודים. עדיין ליהודים לא היה אישור להתיישב בעיר והם נאלצו לשכור בתים מאוניאטים, ועקב כך סבלו סבל כפול, שכן הופנתה נגדם שנאת הנוצרים האורתודוקסים, גם כלפי בעלי בתיהם וגם כלפי היהודים עצמם.

בלארוס הייתה ערש התרבות היהודית הליטאית, ובתחמה פעלו ישיבות מפורסמות. בהשפעת הגאון מווילנה (1720-1797) הוקמו בעיר מספר ישיבות. חלק גדול מהיהודים החרדים (אלו שאינם חסידים או ספרדים) שומרים עד היום את ההגדרה של ‘יהודים ליטאים’, שמבחינה היסטורית חלה על כל יהודי בלארוס.

במפקד האוכלוסין שנערך ב-1766 חיו בתחומי בלארוס של היום 62,800 יהודים, כאשר שתי הקהילות הגדולות היו מינסק ופינסק עם כ-1400 יהודים בכל אחת.

מפקד האוכלוסין שערכה רוסיה הצארית ב-1897 גילה כי בתחומי בלארוס של היום חיו 910,000 יהודים (הקבוצה האתנית השנייה בגודלה – 13.6% מתושבי הארץ כולה) היהודים היוו 21% בתחומי האימפריה הרוסית. הקהילה הגדולה ביותר הייתה במינסק (47,560 מתוך 91,494 – 52% מתושבי העיר). בתקופה זו היו היהודים הקבוצה האתנית העירונית הגדולה ביותר בבלארוס (59.4%).

עד למלחמת העולם הראשונה הייתה בבלארוס אוכלוסייה יהודית גדולה ובעלת תרבות מפוארת. הקהילות הגדולות היו במינסק, הרודנה, פינסק, הומל, מוהילב וויטבסק. בערים אלה היוו היהודים אחוז גדול מכלל האוכלוסייה. היה בה גם גרעין של השכלה כללית, שהבולט בחבריה היה חיים נחמן ביאליק. בשלהי המאה ה-19 ובתחילת המאה ה-20 שימשה מרכז לתנועת הפועלים היהודית.

בין שתי מלחמות העולם הייתה בלארוס מחולקת בין ברית המועצות לפולין. ב-1926 חיו בבלארוס (הסובייטית) 407,000 יהודים ומספר דומה של יהודים חי בחלקה הפולני של בלארוס.

בחלק הסובייטי היוו היהודים את הקבוצה האתנית השנייה בגודלה (8%) ואחת השפות הרשמיות של הרפובליקה הסובייטית הסוציאליסטית הבלארוסית הייתה היידיש. בתחילת שנות ה-20 התקיימו חיי קהילה ענפים, אך הללו גוועו עם הקולקטיביזציה והרדיפות של תקופת סטלין.

ברבנות העיר כיהנו והתגוררו רבנים מפורסמים וביניהם: הרב יחיאל היילפרין – מחבר “סדר הדורות”, הרב ירוחם יהודה ליב פרלמן שכונה ה”גדול ממינסק”, הרב בנימין הכהן שקוביצקי שכונה “המגיד ממינסק”, והרב גרשון תנחום ממינסק.

After the 1569 Polish–Lithuanian union, the city became a destination for migrating Jews (Ashkenazim, who worked in the retail trade and as craftsmen, as other opportunities were prohibited by discrimination laws). Many Minsk residents became polonised, adopting the language of the dominant Poles and assimilating to its culture. After the partition of Poland-Lithuania in 1793, Minsk became part of the Russian Empire. The Russians dominated the city’s culture. At the time of the 1897 census under the Russian Empire, Jews were the largest ethnic group in Minsk, at 52% of the population, with 47,500 of the 91,000 residents. Between the 1880s and 1930s many Jews emigrated from the city to the United States as part of a Belarusian diaspora.

הסכם ריבנטרופ-מולוטוב – The Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact

לפני השואה חיו בבלארוס כ-750,000 יהודים, מרביתם בחלקה המערבי, שהיה עד 1939 בשלטון פולין. לא פחות מ-5,295 ישובים בלארוסים נשרפו ונחרבו על ידי הנאצים. פעמים רבות כל התושבים נהרגו – עד 1,500 קורבנות כענש לשיתוף עם הפרטיזנים.

ב-1939 סיפחה ברית המועצות את מערב בלארוס אחרי הסכם ריבנטרופ-מולוטוב. הקהילות בשני חצאי בלארוס היו שונות בתכלית האחת מהשנייה. יהודי מזרח בלארוס היו מעיקרם עירוניים, חילונים ודוברי רוסית – בעוד אלו מהמערב שימרו את תרבות השטעטל, היה בהם אחוז גבוה של דתיים והשפה העיקרית הייתה היידיש.

הסכם ברסט-ליטובסק. מקור http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Ribbentrop-Molotov.svg יוצר: The Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact    Peter Hanula

The Battle of Bialystok-Minsk – June 1941

This video examines a battle that involved over 1.4 million soldiers. The battle was one of the first engagements in Operation Barbarossa, and astoundingly decisive.

German Invasion Of Russia – June 1941

The movie from “British Pathé” below shows panning shot along road of advancing German troops passing retreating Russian prisoners. Various shots of German infantry advancing through smoke and rubble strewn town. Various shots of German tanks advancing through town (possibly Minsk) and across the bridge. Several shots of the German tanks advancing across Russian farmland. Burning Russian tanks seen in cornfields, prisoners walking along. Various shots of German heavy artillery shelling town of Brest-Litowsk. Various shots on outskirts of town, Russian troops with white flags surrender. Shots of large numbers of prisoners being rounded up and marched off. German troops in town mopping up snipers. Various shots of German antiaircraft guns in action. Flak in sky and Russian plane crashes into field. Close up shot of burning wreckage of plane in field.

השואה במינסק – The Holocaust in Minsk

כשהגרמנים פלשו לברית המועצות ב-22 ביוני 1941 כחלק ממבצע ברברוסה, מינסק נמצאה באופן מיידי תחת התקפה. העיר הופצצה ביום הראשון לפלישה ואחרי ארבעה ימים היא עברה לשליטת הוורמאכט. הגרמנים הפכו את העיר למרכז נציבות הרייך אוסטלנד. קומוניסטים נהרגו או נכלאו. ב-1942 מינסק נהפכה למרכז חשוב של תנועת ההתנגדות של הפרטיזנים הסובייטים. עד 1991 הייתה בלארוס “הרפובליקה הסובייטית הסוציאליסטית של בלארוס”, כלומר רפובליקה סובייטית בברית המועצות. באוגוסט 1991, אחרי כישלון ההפיכה במוסקבה, הכריזה בלארוס סופית על עצמאותה.

Under the Nazi occupation of the Second World War, working through local populations, Germans instituted deportation of Jewish citizens to concentration camps, murdering most of them there. The Jewish community of Minsk suffered catastrophic losses in the Holocaust. From more than half the population of the city, the percentage of Jews dropped to less than 10% more than ten years after the war.

אנדרטה בכפר הירוק לזכר מאשה ברוסקינה ושאר הלוחמות היהודיות שנספו במלחמתן נגד הנאצים – Holocaust Memorial in Minsk

Downtown Minsk – Belarusian capital, that was completely demolished in WWII by the bombings. The large building in the distance is an Opera House.                                                                                  מרכז מינדסק אחרי הפגזה

השואה בבלארוס הסובייטית החלה בקיץ 1941, במהלך התקפה גרמנית על עמדות סובייטיות במבצע ברברוסה.מינסק הופצצה והוורמאכט כבש אותה ב-28 ביוני 1941. ב-3 ביולי 1941, במהלך האקציה הראשונה במינסק, הוצעדו 2,000 יהודים בני האינטליגנציה ליער ונרצחו. האיינזצגרופן ביצע מעשי טבח מעבר לגבול הגרמני-סובייטי ותעד בכתב מעשים אלה.

  Minsk-Juden Column of prisoners of the Minsk ghetto on the street. 1941 הארכיון הפדרלי הגרמני Blue pencil.svg wikidata:Q685753 Herrmann, Ernst – Bildbestand (N 1576 Bild) מספר גישה  N 1576 Bild-006                                                                                                                                                              אסירים יהודים 1941

  הארכיון הפדרלי הגרמני Blue pencil.svg wikidata:Q685753 Jews in forced labor in Minsk. February 1942                                                                                                                                     יהודים אסירים 1942 Allgemeiner Deutscher Nachrichtendienst – Zentralbild (Bild 183)

    בשואה הושמדה מרבית הקהילה היהודית. עם כיבושה של בלארוס על ידי גרמניה הנאצית ב-1941 הצליחו חלק מן היהודים להימלט מזרחה (בעיקר מהחלק המזרחי, שהותקף מאוחר יותר), בעוד רוב הנשארים נרצחו. לפי נתונים היסטוריים שונים, בשואה נספו 86% מיהודי מערב בלארוסו-36% מיהודי מזרח בלארוס.

Head of the Minsk ghetto Mikhail Gebelev   ראש הגטו של מינסק

 גטו מינסק -The Minsk Ghetto

The Soviet census of 1926 showed 53,700 Jews living in Minsk constituting close to 41% of the city’s inhabitants.The ghetto was created soon after the German invasion of the Soviet Union and capture of the city of Minsk, capital of the Belorussian SSR, on 28 June 1941. On the fifth day after the occupation, 2,000 Jewish intelligentsia were massacred by the Germans; from then on, murders of Jews became a common occurrence. About 20,000 Jews were murdered within the first few months of the German occupation, mostly by the Einsatzgruppen squads. On 17 July 1941 the German occupational authority, the Reichskommissariat Ostland, was created. On 20 July, the Minsk Ghetto was established. A Jewish Council (Judenrat) was established as well. The total population of the ghetto was about 80,000 (over 100,000 according to some sources), of which about 50,000 were pre-war inhabitants, and the remainder (30,000 or more) were refugees and Jews forcibly resettled by the Germans from nearby settlements. In November 1941 a second ghetto was established in Minsk for Jews deported from the West, known as Ghetto Hamburg, which adjoined the main Minsk ghetto. Above the entrance to this separate ghetto was a sign: Sonderghetto (Special Ghetto). Every night the Gestapo would murder 70–80 of the new arrivals. This ghetto was divided into five sections, according to the places from which the inhabitants came: Hamburg, Frankfurt, Berlin, the Rhineland, Bremen, and Vienna. Most of the Jews in this ghetto were from Germany and the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia; at its height it had about 35,000 residents. Little contact was permitted between the inhabitants of the two ghettos. By August fewer than 9,000 Jews were left in the ghetto according to German official documents. The ghetto was liquidated on 21 October 1943, with many Minsk Jews perishing in the Sobibor extermination camp. Several thousand were massacred at Maly Trostenets extermination camp (before the war, Maly Trostenets was a village a few miles to the east of Minsk). By the time the Red Army retook the city on 3 July 1944, there were only a few Jewish survivors.

הגטו של מינסק – The Minsk Ghetto

בעיר מינסק הוקם גטו מינסק, שהיה הגטו שהחזיק הכי הרבה זמן בשטחי ברית המועצות הכבושים. יהודי הגטו הוצאו במספר אקציות להריגה בבורות ענק שנחפרו בקרבת הכפרים טוצ׳ינקה ומאלי טרוסטינץ (ראה מטה). ב-8 ביולי 1941 פקד ריינהרד היידריך לירות בכל היהודים הזכרים בשטח הכבוש בין הגילים 15 ל-45, כבפרטיזנים סובייטים. באוגוסט צורפו לנורים נשים, ילדים וקשישים.

Map of the Minsk Ghetto by professor Barbara Epstein                                                                     מפת גטו מינסק

Minsk During the Occupation – מינסק כבושה

כ-11,600 יהודים במינסק נלקחו במשאיות אל הכפר הסמוך טוצ’ינקה (טוצ’ינקי) ונורו בידי חברי האיינזצגרופה א’. ההיסטוריון מרטין גילברט כתב כי הקומיסר הכללי שלנציבות הרייך אוסטלנד, וילהלם קובה, השתתף אישית בהרג במרס 1942 בגטו מינסק.

פעולות חיסול בשטחים (כולל העיר מינסק) שנכבשו על ידי הגרמנים מאז יוני 1941 נערכו במספר מקומות בולטים בבלארוס של ימינו. הקורבנות הועברו ברכבת גם לאתר ההשמדה ברונה גורה.

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Museum of History and Culture of Jews of Belarus – מוזיאון תולדות היהודים בבלארוס ותרבותם

Museum of Jewish History and Culture in Belarus is a small museum in Minsk, Belarus. It was founded in 2002 by historian Inna Gerasimova in conjunction with the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. The Joint Committee and the “Union of Belarusian Jewish Organizations and Communities” supports the museum, along with the local Belarusian Jewish community. Offices for local Jewish community services are located in the same building. The entire exhibition of the museum consists of those items that were donated by local residents and their descendants. The earliest exhibits in it date back to the end of the 19th century. The present director is Julia Mikolutzkaya. [All photos with permission of the Museum]

Museum of History and Culture of Jews of Belarus

28 V Khoruzhey Street Minsk, 220 123, Belarus

Tel: 375298018635, 375172867961           minskjewishmuseum@gmail.com                Opening hours: Mon – Sun – By appointment – Free admission

A virtual tour of the museum is available in English.

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  פרויקט הנצחת זכרון השואה – Project Anne Frank and the Memory of the Second World War in Belarus

Video was created in Minsk on 27-29 of August 2015 in the framework of the project Anne Frank and the Memory of the Second World War in Belarus supported by the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands and Konrad Adenauer Foundation.

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Belarusian State Museum of the History of the Great Patriotic War – מוזיאון בלארוס לזכר מלחמת העולם השניה

The Belarusian State Museum of the History of the Great Patriotic War was the world’s first museum to tell the story of the bloodiest war of the 20th century (founded 30 September 1943 in Moscow since Minsk had been evactuated). In August 1944 it was moved to the liberated Minsk to one of the few intact buildings in the destructed and looted Minsk. Today it is one of the most important and biggest war museums in the world, along with the well-stocked museums in Moscow, Kiev, and New Orleans. In those terrible years Belarus lost every third resident. More than 3 million people died, including about 50,000 partisans and underground fighters. Throughout the country there were 250 death camps, including the infamous Trostenets, one of the largest after Auschwitz, Majdanek and Treblinka. The museum does not mention Jews as such, only Belarus citizens. The audio guide does not include Yiddish.

Belarusian Great Patriotic War Museum Photo: Julian Nyča

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 Minsk Holocaust Monument in Jerusalem –  אנדרטת שואת מינסק בירושלים

אלפים מיהודי הגטו נמלטו ממנו ליערות הסמוכים ולחמו שם כנגד הגרמנים (למשל, מאשה ברוסקינה). אחרוני היהודים בגטו, שהועסקו בעבודות כפיה נשלחו אל מותם במחנההמוות סוביבור, או שנורו למוות בחודשים ספטמבר-אוקטובר 1943. כנראה, רק 13 יהודים שרדו את הגטו.

Minsk Jewery memorial at , Kiriat Shaul Cemetery’ Israel צילום: דוד שי

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Holocaust Monuments in Minsk –  אנדרטות שואה במינסק

The monument to victims of Minsk ghetto at Pritytskogo street, Minsk, Belarus צילום:Vadim Sazanovich                                                                                                                                                                   אנדרטה לקרבנות השואה במינסק

El Maleh Rachamim/G-D Full of Mercy/ Kaddish

  שיקום הקהילה היהודית במינסק – Rebuilding the Jewish Community after the War

לאחר המלחמה חזרו חלק מן הניצולים לבלארוס. החיים היהודיים קמו לתחייה האופן יחסי בהשואה ליתר לברית המועצות. במינסק התנהל תיאטרון יהודי בהנהלת שלמה מיכאלס; בקהילות רבות הוסיפו להתקיים רבנים ובתי כנסת. בסוף שנות ה-40 של המאה ה-20 ידעה העיר התנכלויות של השלטונות לפעילות היהודית. בינואר 1948 על ידי סוכני הק.ג.ב. נרצח ראש התיאטרון היהודי שלמה מיכואלס, יושב ראש הוועד, בתאונת דרכים מבוימת . ב-1949 נסגר התיאטרון היהודי ועובדיו פוטרו. לאחר רצח מיכאלס ומשפט הרופאים ב-1953, חוסלה מרבית הפעילות. נוסף על כך, השלטונות הסובייטים עודדו יהודים רבים לעזוב את בלארוס ואוקראינה ולהתיישב בעומק רוסיה ומרכז אסיה, כדי לפתח את האזורים הללו מבחינה כלכלית.

ב-1959 הוחרם בית הכנסת הגדול, ובניינו עבר לידי תיאטרון גורקי. ב-1959 האוכלוסייה היהודית מנתה 38,842 נפשות. בשנות ה-60 נאסר על קבורה בבית הקברות היהודי, ולאחר מכן הוא נהרס ונהפך לאצטדיון דינמו.

בתקופת הפרסטרויקה התחדשה הפעילות הקהילתית. ב-1988 הוקמה “אגודת חובבי התרבות היהודית” על שם יצחק חריק. ב-1989 נפתח בית הספר היהודי החד שבועי על ידי יורי דורן, שלאחר מכן הקים את iro – התאחדות יהודי בלארוס. בלארוסים כחסידי אומות העולם. כל האותות הוענקו לאחר פירוק ב��ית המועצות. רבים מהמעוטרים באות הגיעו ממינסק, ועד כה כבר נפטרו.

בשנות ה-90 של המאה ה-20 התעוררו החיים היהודיים שוב; הוקמו בתי ספר במקומות שונים, ושבו רבנים לעמוד בראש הקהילות. לפני תחילת העלייה גדולה של שנות ה-90 היו בבלארוס 112,000 יהודים. בין השנים 1990–2004 עלו לישראל כ-70,000 עולים מבלארוס.

כיום קיימים במינסק שני בתי כנסת של התאחדות יהודי בלארוס – האחד מתפלל בנוסח אשכנז, והאחר של חסידות חב”ד, בראשות שליח חב”ד במקום הרב שניאור זלמן דייטש. עד ינואר 2017 הכיר יד ושם ב-641 חסידי אומות העולם.

מינסק בשנות ה-30     Minsk in the 1930s

מינסק היום – Minsk Today

Minister of sport and tourism in Belarus released an official video clip promoting spiritual Jewish tourism to Belarus. In Belarus there are buildings of formerly world famous yeshivas in such shtetls as Radun, Mir, Volozhyn, Baranovichy. There are buildings of former synagogues, few graves of famous Rabbis; the most often visited one is the grave of Rabbi Chofetz Chaim.

ביבליוגרפיה

IN AUGUST OF 1944 Russian-Belarusian WWII movie with English subtitles

יומנו השלם של אברהם זלמן כהן: Hebrew autobiograhy of Abraham Zalman Cohen describing Jewish life in Czarist White Russian village of Bogushevichi, Communist Revolution, escape and immigration to the United State, work in New York City and Peekskill, NY and building a family in the Jewish Community of Ossining, NY/

Forty Five Years on the Block – The Autobiography Of Abraham Zalman Cohen: אנגלית

מכתבים ששלח אליהו – צבי – הירש כהן – כגן מבלרוס אל בנו ואל קרובי משפחתו בארה”ב : Letters sent by Eliahu – Zvi – Hirsh Cohen – Kagan to his son, Avraham – Zalman Cohen, in 1927 through 1937

  המלצה של הושבילים:-  Jewish Tour Agency 

The Jewish Tour Agency was founded in 2005 to provide the Jews from different countries of the world with the possibility to discover, to explore and to study the rich Jewish heritage of Belarus, offering offers group and individual tours over Belarus, Lithuania, Poland, Russia and Ukraine.

Minsk, 220002 Belarus   Daumana 13B, office 7     Tel: +375 17 288 69 58    + 375 29 65 65 965       info@jewish-tour.com

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All the links to our pilgrimage to Belarus

מינסק – Minsk

יאמא – Yama

מאלי טרוסטינץ – Maly Trostinets

חאטין –  Khatyn

בורוסוב – Borisov

שקלוב – Shklov

םוגילב – Mogilev

בושאַוויץ – Bogushevichi

סמילביצ׳י – Смілавічы

מינסק – Минск – Minsk היכונו למסע צליינות וחיפוש אחר מקורות המשפחה שלי ברוסיה הלבנה - הן מצד אבא והן מצד אמא.

[political-fluffle]

The Kremlin didn’t just rely on the alt-right to help Trump win. Bernie Bros, Greens, and ‘anti-imperialists’ got had, too.

(...) As I helped catalog at the Columbia Journalism School, RT, rather than focus solely on puffing up GOP candidates, expends more effort in targeting America’s far-left fellow-travelers. There’s a reason, after all, that Kremlin-funded Sputnik hosts podcasts by Americans who claim “progressive” viewpoints—at least when it comes to altering the exclusively domestic landscape in America. Nor are these fake news outlets tilling fallow soil.

Consider one of the flagship magazines of the American left, which, for all its support of gay rights, government transparency, and voting rights as they pertain to U.S. society, has developed a notoriously soft spot for a regime that violently opposes all of the above.

The Nation’s coverage of Russian affairs is a national embarrassment. RT is a website that hosts neo-Nazis as “expert” commentators. Yet that does not stop The Nation from publishing whataboutist articles in defense of the propaganda channel; articles pushing the same argument, with the exact same headlines, as those found in white-nationalist publications. ...)

At times, the substance and style of what has been dubbed the “alt-left” are indistinguishable from that of its counterpart on the other end of the political spectrum. And Moscow’s info-warriors appear to appreciate the resemblance, as the American arm of Sputnik exhorted supporters of Bernie Sanders to vote for Trump (as did Trump himself, repeatedly).

In years of researching Kremlin influence-peddling, I’ve discovered first-hand just how eerily similar far-left and far-right Putinists are to each other. (...)

WikiLeaks is clearly the online epicenter of the 21st-century’s red-brown convergence. How else to account for how an Australian cyberanarchist has found common cause with a racist millionaire real-estate baron—apart, that is, from their apparent mutual regard for the opposite sex?

WikiLeaks, it is worth recalling, began as a seemingly noble “transparency” organization that sought to help shine a light on post-Soviet autocracies and their human-rights abuses. Yet somewhere along the way it saw fit to partner with anti-Semites who delivered leaked U.S. State Department cables to Belarus’s pro-Moscow dictatorship, which used these sensitive documents to chase down dissidents. Nor has this caused WikiLeaks or Assange any moral misgivings. As Vox’s Zack Beauchamp detailed, Assange refused to investigate WikiLeaks’s role in aiding the machinations of Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, Europe’s last dictator, whose secret police (still known by its Cold War acronym, the KGB) arrested activists and opposition figures.

A quick glimpse through WikiLeaks’s Twitter feed lately is enough to confirm the group’s disconcerting preference for siding with the Putinist narrative, and Kremlin interests, all in the name of anti-Americanism. (...)

What remains of the internationalist wing of the Republican Party is understandably unnerved by how much of the American right has happily aligned with Putin’s spymasters and arms-length purveyors of “active measures” and provided cover for a foreign government’s interference in a U.S. election.

But the American left has just as much reason to take stock. Ideologically promiscuous and unbound by the orthodoxies of a single party or historical narrative, Putin has cultivated dupes, fellow travelers, and purblind fools among plenty of American progressives who, whether by accident or design, have facilitated the rise of the most extremist and reactionary president this country has ever elected. (...)

Ergo Tulsi! Yang! and Bernard again...